Domestic Culture, Female Patronage and Gender Politics in 1930s Turin: the Case of Pro Cultura Femminile

Founded in 1911, Turin’s emancipative women’s organization Pro Cultura Femminile formulated its goal as “to do culture the feminine way”. By the 1930s, Pro Cultura Femminile had become one of Turin’s leading cultural associations, staging a series of exhibitions dedicated to female art and domestic culture. This talk revisits these exhibitions as they testify to their changing societal, political and cultural context. It aims to show the ways in which Pro Cultura Femminile negotiated its take on domestic cultures in the Fascist context, at times abiding by, at times disregarding Fascist policies.

Talk by Gerlinde Verhaeghe, Postdoc, Mobility Fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation

• Lecture_Gerlinde (527 KB)