This is an interesting thread. I think the text is good, but probably needs to be sanded down a bit more. And how that should be done depends entirely on the form and content of the exhibition and who you would like your audience to be. However, and in any case, one way you could get around the "social constructionist" jargon would be to just say that sex and gender get their determinations from society and culture, and that similarly, like society and culture, they change through time.
As a recent PhD grad from a hybrid program in Cultural Studies and museum studies, I can also tell you *that* concept specifically, the "social constructionist" one, is in the process of being mediated again and already sounds outdated to the ears of the specialists who've inherited it. I'm cribbing from the Fields' sisters book here, which is itself ten years old now....: Sex and gender might be social constructs, but so is the USA, and so are murder and genocide. "Social construction" is a big umbrella term. It's too general. There are many different families of social constructions.
This kind of problem with language and the symbolic is universal to museums and museum studies I think. We are all grappling with this. It's a very good question, how to refine this.
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Seth Alt PhD
Dr. Alt
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2022 02:55 PM
From: Matthew Kirchman
Subject: Gender statement for history exhibition
A client has provided this text for an exhibition. I'm seeking helpful / constructive criticism.
In this exhibit, historical references are made to women with the understanding that today many people consider gender to be a social construct. The term is used broadly to denote a range of identities that do not necessarily correspond to the binary construct of male and female. | | | President & Creative Director | | | | Museum Planning | Exhibition Development | Interpretive Design | | 617.233.8702 | | | | | 9 Naples Road, Salem, Massachusetts 01970 | | | | |
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