Why I am taking my son and daughter to see Feared and Revered this school holiday (and you should take your kids too.)

Posted on 5 April, 2023

As a family which has been privileged enough to travel extensively, I have dragged my kids into a fair number of galleries and museums around the world.

To be brutally honest, some of these cultural excursions have been more successful than others. For instance, a random Banksy exhibition in Lisbon caught everyone’s imagination, as did the dinosaurs in New York’s Museum of Natural History (ably assisted by Robin Williams in Night at the Museum) and the Digital Museum in Tokyo, which, quite frankly, is an experience sure to delight young or old.

But a lot of the time, traditional gallery layouts with corridors of classical oil paintings and Greek sculpture stretching as far as the eye can see can be a little overwhelming for small people. And as my two have grown, I have been conscious of something else.

Most of the work they have consumed is produced by male artists.

In the case of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersberg, Russia, it felt like the entire history of civilisation had been painted by a male hand depicting an entirely masculine world view. Despite hours wandering the second largest museum in the world, I found only three women. Young, beautiful objects of desire. Two of them were breastfeeding soldiers.

The irony that the museum was created by Catherine the Great did little to quell my utter indignation, and I really started to wonder about how my children would  process their experience.

Taking them to Feared and Revered: Feminine Power through the Ages at the National Museum of Australia is my way to even up the scales.

Senior Curator Cheryl Crilly knows only too well the over-riding gender bias in the curatorial world.

Senior Curator of Feared and Revered Cheryl Crilly

She too has “left more than one exhibition incredulous at the under representation—or outright exclusion—of women. It’s an all too familiar story in the presentation of world history. So much focus on male artists, male pioneers, male experiences…”.

Feared and Revered: Feminine Power through the Ages is the first exhibition with this theme, one that brings together female, bi-gendered or genderless spiritual beings from across time and culture to explore female and feminine power.

You will see a brilliant line-up of goddesses, demons, witches, spirits and saints as it explores female power, authority and representation—ideas at the heart of contemporary cultural discussion and debate.

From the dazzling costume worn by Kylie Minogue on her Aphrodite Les Folies world tour in 2011, to representations of  First Nations’ Yawkyawk mermaid-like ancestral spirits, the exhibition has over 160 objects from the British Museum’s collection from antiquity to the present day and filled with magic, wisdom passion and fury.

According to Cheryl, “We’re living in a time of dynamic social, cultural and political change fuelled by movements in the streets and online—here in Australia and around the world. And we are seeing this shift in museums. There’s a refreshing and long overdue emphasis on women’s historic role in shaping cultures, ideas and bringing different perspectives to the fore.”

Crossing six continents and spanning five thousand years you’ll encounter feminine forces from the goddesses of antiquity to powerful beings from living cultures centred around five universal themes – Creation and Nature, Passion and Desire, Magic and Malice, Justice and Defence, Compassion and Salvation – presenting art, artefacts and sacred objects and delving into female authority, identity and representation.

As another groundbreaking female recently remarked in song: “It’s about damn time”.

This is a sponsored editorial but the opinions expressed in this post are the author’s own.