A room for yourself

On October 10, at 7.30 pm, the exhibition installation will open in the Van Eesteren Museum A room to yourself. The starting point of the installation is Virgina Woolf's famous line from her essay A Room of One's Own from 1929: 'A woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”. A “room for yourself” hasn't always come naturally to women, and it's still not the norm for women to live alone.

Nevertheless, construction has been going on for centuries for women living alone in Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. From the fourteenth-century Begijnhof in the center to the Klokkenhof on Surinameplein in 1962, from the Jordaan courtyards to the Louise Wenthuis on Prince Bernhard Square, the city is actually full of “rooms for yourself”. The different buildings tell us a lot about how women, the city and the relationship between the two were looked at. Did the city pose a threat to women alone, or was the city just an oasis of opportunities? That view changed over time, and the buildings for women living alone are silent witnesses of an increasingly emancipated view of women and the city.

A room for yourself put Amsterdam's buildings for women side by side, like a long line through the city and through time. Not only the motivation of the lenders and architects is discussed, but residents also speak. How does it change A room for yourself a woman's life?

The exhibition installation was curated by Laura Lubbers and Fabiola Eekhout. It is part of the annual theme Jakoba Mulder's Soul Mates with which the Van Eesteren Museum wants to correct the dominant male narrative of architecture and urban planning history.

Supported by:

Creative Industry Incentive Fund

North Holland Cultural Fund

NOT fund

Foundation for Women by Women

Countess van Bylandt Foundation

Huibert van Saane Foundation

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