From May to October 2022, visitors were able to experience the exhibition ‘Women in Architecture’ at the Danish Architecture Center (DAC). Photo: Laura Stamer 2022, via DAC.
May to October 2022 saw the exhibition Women in Architecture, a collaboration between the Danish Architecture Center (DAC) and the research project Women in Danish Architecture 1925–1975. The exhibition attracted 90,000 visitors from both Denmark and abroad – a new attendance record for DAC. The show received positive reviews, including five stars in the Danish newspapers Politiken and Kristeligt Dagblad, as well as media coverage in publications including Arch Daily and the Korean journal Space.
We co-curated the historical part of the exhibition, and throughout 2022 we had the pleasure of talking about it through guided tours, lectures, films and other forms of communication. Our audiences ranged widely from schoolchildren to students, cultural associations, trade unions, municipalities and archivists.
Guided tour of the exhibition by Svava Riesto for the association Danske Landskabsarkitekter. Photo: Lillan Thomsen
Our research project helped draw up The Archive, the historical part of the exhibition women creates space. The exhibition had a total of 90,000 visitors from Denmark and abroad, and contributed to DAC setting a new attendance record in 2022. Photo: Laura Stamer DAC
Model of Kildeskovshallen. Photo: Laura Stamer 2022 via DAC
The exhibition was the first of its kind in Denmark, and one of the most popular exhibitions about women in architecture internationally. Visitors were able to explore everything from photos and films to archival materials, models, letters, telegrams and other items created by women who helped to shape our buildings, cities and landscapes.
Throughout 2022, Jannie Bendsen, Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner had a busy programme of guided tours and presentations, including Realdania By og Byg, Foreningen af Danske Kunsthistorikere (Association of Danish Art Historians), undergraduate and postgraduate students on various degree programmes, international research networks, and other companies and groups. In June, Henriette Steiner met with bestselling author Gry Jexen and journalist Ane Cortzen at the DAC event AfterDAC, giving a talk about why women have so often been overlooked in history.
In September, as part of the history festival Golden Days – the theme of which for 2022 was ‘queens’ – Henriette Steiner gave a guided tour of the exhibition, offering insights into the research work behind it. Photo: Golden Days.
The guided tours were special opportunities for dialogue about the exhibition with many different target groups and provided our research project with valuable feedback. In this way, the exhibition not only helped us to disseminate knowledge collected by our project but also became part of our research methods, as our dialogues with audiences became new sources of knowledge. Thanks to the exhibition, several descendants of historical women architects contacted us and offered important materials we would not have been able to collect from official archives.
Tour of the exhibition with researchers from the network Where are the Women in Scandinavian Landscape Architecture? by Henriette Steiner and Svava Riesto. Photo: Lei Gao
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Thank you to the many visitors we met along the way, and to DAC for a fantastic collaboration.
‘Women in Architecture’ received funding from Realdania, the Augustinus Foundation, the William Demant Foundation and Kvindernes Bygnings Fond (Women’s Building Foundation).
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