To mark the opening of the exhibitions Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today and Untold Stories – Women designers in Belgium 1880-1980, the Design Museum Brussels and the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta (ULB) invite you to join us for a discussion exploring the issues, methods and impact of research into the history of women in design, interior architecture and graphic design. Moderated by Apolline Vranken, researcher at ULB’s Faculty of Architecture, this talk brings together Nina Steinmüller, one of the curators of Here We Are! alongside Javier Gimeno-Martinez, Katarina Serulus and Marjan Sterckx, the curators of Untold Stories.

Many women creators have remained on the sidelines, even ignored by institutional and heritage organizations, the academic world and the general public. This invisibilization has created, and continues to create, distinctive and largely incomplete narrative biases. By bringing new narratives to discourse and history, research into women designers makes it possible to challenge the status quo, bridge the imbalance between women and men, and rehabilitate these female figures who have left their mark on history. Now shared with a wide audience through these exhibitions, this research provides a singular, fresh and up-to-date look at a history of design.

Speakers:

• Nina Steinmüller is the Collections Curator at the Vitra Design Museum and one of the co-curators of Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today . She was assistant curator of the exhibition Night Fever: Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today (2018) and served as editorial manager and co-editor of the Atlas of Furniture Design (2019). Nina studied Arts Management in Potsdam and holds a Master of Arts degree in Art History and Cultural Studies from Berlin’s Humboldt University. She has a DPhil in Art History from the University of Basel.
• Javier Gimeno-Martínez is an associate professor of design history and theory at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research interest encompasses issues of national identity and displacement as related to design. His articles have been published in academic journals such as Journal of Design History, Design Issues, Design and Culture, The Burlington Magazine and Urban Studies. He is the author of the books Design and National Identity (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and Design History and Culture. Methods and Approaches (Routledge, 2025). He is a member of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS).
• Katarina Serulus is an independent researcher and curator. In 2016 she defended at the University of Antwerp her PhD thesis entitled Design & Politics: The Public Promotion of Industrial Design in Postwar Belgium (1950-1986) (Leuven University Press, 2018). In 2020 she initiated as project manager at the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAI) in Antwerp the project Wiki Women Design which has brought many of history’s women architects and designers out of the shadows. She has also curated several exhibitions on design and architecture: A History of Modern Design in Belgium (Design Museum Brussels, 2017), Designing the Night. Graphic Design and Belgian Club Culture 1970-2000 (Design Museum Brussels, 2019), Léon Stynen, architect (VAI, 2018), Night Fever : Designing Club Culture 1960-Today.
• Marjan Sterckx is associate professor of Art History at Ghent University, where she lectures on the histories of nineteenth-century art and of interior design. She is the founding chair of the research group The Inside Story: Art & Interior 1750–1950 (ThIS). Sterckx is co-editor of Brepols publishers’ book series Studies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture and of the journal Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design. Her research considers the intersections between art, gender and space for the period c. 1750–1950. She co-edited some volumes on nineteenth-century art and curated the exhibitions Crime Scenes. Interwar interiors through the lens of forensic photography in Ghent (2021) and Yvonne Serruys. Sculpteur de la femme nouvelle (Menen, 2023).
• Apolline Vranken is a FRESH-FNRS doctoral researcher in the Hortense Laboratory at ULB’s Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta. Her research focuses on Belgian architect Simone Guillissen-Hoa. With L’architecture qui dégenre which she founded in 2018, she is also behind the Belgian edition of the Matrimony Days. Her research focuses on questions of gender relations in space and urban equality. In 2018, she published Des béguinages à l’architecture féministe: Comment interroger et subvertir les rapports de genre matérialisés dans l’habitat (Univertisté des Femmes).

Practical information

Where:

Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta, “Lombard” building

Rue du Lombard 42 – 1000 Brussels

When: 14.10.2024 at 7.30pm

Language: EN

Rate: Free

Information: info@designmuseum.brussels / 02 669 49 21