Designing Motherhood, a Wellcome addition to the collection.
by Carmel Wilkinson-Ayre
“There’s been a lot of emphasis on making these kinds of design and this period of life in general invisible. Social media is hopefully changing that… we’ve found that there is a really receptive audience to discussing a lot of these objects.”
Amber Winnick, Co-Founder of Designing Motherhood
Introduction
We have all been given birth to, it is a universal experience in life that has many affiliated objects attached to it. These are designed objects that aid reproduction, childbirth and maternity. The objects span from menstrual cups, pregnancy tests and breast pumps, to maternity wear, baby carriers and postpartum pants. They are relied upon while the body is in a temporary state and have both liberated and oppressed people in equal measure. Pregnancy, labour and maternity is predominantly associated with women however the female gender has shifted in recent years to include people who identify as transexual, non-binary and gender nonconforming. Due to this objects linked to maternity and reproduction are now used by an even larger population and therefore play an even more expansive role in society than ever before. So why have these objects and the discourse surrounding them been overlooked by both society and the museum? If museums are supposed to collect objects of scientific and cultural importance, why do products linked to reproduction, maternity and childbirth rarely exist in collections? Surely these objects should form part of current museum collections in order to paint a fuller and more accurate representation of human life?
Designing Motherhood (@designingmotherhood) is a project with an accompanying Instagram feed, for the purpose of this short essay I will focus on this feed which combines objects, media and discourse surrounding the topic of motherhood (fig.1) (fig. 2). Created by Michelle Millar Fisher, a curator and design historian and Amber Winnick, a writer specialising in art and design, Designing Motherhood disassembles the vast topic of Motherhood into the following subtopics; reproduction, pregnancy, birth and postpartum.
The Wellcome Collection, a collection of medical artefacts and original artworks, based in London, acts as a bridge between art, design, history and science. With collections of historic and contemporary objects linked to pregnancy, maternity, contraception and infertility, I argue that the addition of @designingmotherhood to their collection would be both fitting and enriching.
This essay is split into three sections; Designing Motherhood vs. Design Discourse, Enhancing the Collection(s) and Tender Loving Care. The first section outlines the Designing Motherhood project and looks at the design objects depicted in the project’s Instagram feed. It also analyses how this Instagram feed contributes to design in its widest sense as a system and includes a summary of why some of the objects pictured in the feed have been overlooked by society.
The second section argues for the inclusion of @designingmotherhood in the Wellcome Collection and discusses how this would strengthen and contextualise the relationship between some of the collection’s current objects. It also expands on why some of the objects featured on the platform should be part of wider design collections and not just associated with science museums. This section acknowledges the efforts made by women in museums to integrate these products into design collections and briefly discusses how gender disparity can play a huge role in what is being collected.
The third section looks at the necessity of museums to acquire digital objects and details the Wellcome Collection’s policy in relation to collecting them. This essay highlights the ‘invisible’ period of reproduction and motherhood in women’s lives and the objects that are relied upon during this period. It argues for the validation of objects linked to motherhood and the people that these objects represent, and for their increased representation not only in the design world and museums, but in society more broadly.
DESIGNING MOTHERHOOD VS. DESIGN DISCOURSE
The Designing Motherhood: A Century of Making (and Unmaking) Babies project is described by its creators as “a first-of-its-kind cross-institutional endeavor on the subject of design for reproduction, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum” (Designing Motherhood, 2019). The project has multiple partners and collaborating curators from museums and universities and will soon be materialised into a book and exhibition displaying over 100 objects linked to motherhood. Designing Motherhood will be shown simultaneously across two museums; the Mütter Museum, a medical museum and the Centre of Architecture and Design both in Philadelphia, USA. Inspiration for the project began in 2015 when Michelle Millar Fisher worked as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, alongside Paola Antonelli, an esteemed design curator. Both Millar Fisher and Antonelli struggled to introduce industrial design products such as the first breast pump, designed by Einar Egnell (c.1960) into MoMA’s permanent collection (fig.3). They felt that even though this product had contributed to design and society greatly “that it was probably something that would never be acquired into the museum’s collection, that design really didn’t have a space for it” (Millar Fisher, 2019). This realisation acted as a catalyst for the creation of the Designing Motherhood project and shone light on the difficulties faced by female curators to introduce crucial reproductive and maternity based products into museum collections and their absence in the design canon. The lack of representation of these products echoes the lack of representation of women in not only design and museum collections but in society as a whole. To understand and discuss the impact of these objects on pregnant people Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winnick created an Instagram to accompany and document the project.
While the instagram feed displays objects, print and digital media, this essay focuses on the objects featured in its posts. @designingmotherhood features historical and contemporary designs which relate to reproduction and motherhood. By publicising images of these often highly personal, scarcely discussed and therefore relatively unknown designs the creators aim to draw attention to them, promote awareness of their existence and conditions of use and encourage shared discussion and personal anecdotes. Featured objects include the first home pregnancy kit designed by Margaret Crane in the late 1960s (fig.4), a breast pump by Einer Egnell, the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit used for early stage abortions designed by Evelyn Lorraine Rothman in 1971, as well as more recent designs such as the Silverettes, anti-inflammatory nipple covers designed in 2002, and the Lia Pregnancy Kit, the first flushable pregnancy test designed in 2018 (fig.5).
From breast pumps, maternity clothing and pregnancy kits to sonograms, teething toys and postpartum pants all of the objects featured on @designingmotherhood are either overlooked or unrecognised by wider society due to many of them being discreetly used by pregnant people and rarely spoken about. For instance many breast pumps are still difficult to use hands-free due to them being ill-fitting and having too many components and wires, this means that pregnant people regularly find themselves having to hold the pumps for extended periods of time, multiple times a day in the confined space of their own home. This is just one example of the many designs linked to reproduction and maternity that have liberated pregnant people whilst simultaneously oppressing them. These objects impact the lives of pregnant people and this should therefore be acknowledged and responded to in relation to design and society.
@designingmotherhood was conceived in January of this year and currently comprises 282 posts and has 1,942 followers. Instagram, an image sharing social media platform, hit a milestone in 2013 of 100 million users, due to the apps popularity it is having a profound impact on society and culture. The instagramification of culture is shifting how people project their lifestyle (Winnick, 2019). Instagramification is digital storytelling that users adopt through the app, the stories depicted are not always representational of a person’s life or circumstances instead these stories portray a more glorified version of reality. While @designingmotherhood remains a fact-based and educational feed, the increased popularity of sharing personal experiences online in this manner has helped increase awareness of a variety of issues.
With the sharing of a users lifestyle comes the sharing of experiences and subsequent discourse around these experiences. In some occasions such as @designingmotherhood it is acting as a “sociomaterial assembly that deals with matters of concern” (Binder et al., 2011). When we consider design as an expanded field this encompasses the idea of a designed system, Instagram acts as a designed system for communities to communicate and can often normalise topics that are classed as taboo in society. Millar Fisher (2019) states that Designing Motherhood allows followers to have solidarity with one another due to the community generated through the Instagram account. The combination of a formed community and the importance of the objects featured on @designingmotherhood act as an important contributor to current design discourse.
ENHANCING THE COLLECTION(S)
Established by Sir Henry Wellcome in 1936, the Wellcome Collection forges connections between science, medicine, life and art. A combined museum and library, the museum’s collection branches into two sections; the core collection and support collection. In this section I will focus on the core collection and why @designingmotherhood should feature in it.
The core collection contains 800 sub-collections of personal papers, organisational archives and 3,000 moving image and sound recordings. The archive material is published in over 50 different languages and dates from antiquity to the present day. The Wellcome Collection’s Conservation and Collections Care Policy states that they aim to challenge the way society thinks about health, to make thought provoking content that allows its public to reflect on what it means to be healthy and human (Wellcome Collection, 2018). This ethos is reflected in the Designing Motherhood project and its Instagram feed. The Wellcome Collection’s core collection contains 1,333 books, images of objects, photographs and illustrations linked to the following categories; pregnancy, motherhood, maternity and contraception. Ranging from Clearblue pregnancy kits, historical maternity reports and pregnancy photography to anatomical drawings the collection is vast and incredibly varied. The following examples provide a historic context to those featured on @designingmotherhood.
One such object is a Japanese Porcelain Feed Bottle, used between 1780–1900 (fig.6). Usually filled with milk or water, these feeding vessels were commonly used to nurse new-born babies and featured small spouts so that babies could feed easily. Used over an extensive period, the Porcelain Feed Bottle echoes the function of the breast pump both providing babies with the nutrition they require. The second object from the Wellcome Collection that has an evident and compelling relationship with @designingmotherhood is a collection of 70 box files linked to the author and women’s rights campaigner, Marie Stopes (b.1880). Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain and published a book titled Married Love in 1918, this brought the subject of birth control into the public realm for the first time. The papers present in the Wellcome Collection document the important discussion occuring between 1915–1943 relating to sexuality, abortion, infertility and birth control. There are parallels between the topics touched upon on @designingmotherhood and those mentioned in Stopes’ letters, one acts as a historical paper archive and one a contemporary digital archive. The most compelling reason for @designingmotherhood to feature in the Wellcome Collection is that they share similar dialogue and historical and contemporary perspectives on the topic of motherhood. Both provide a richer and fuller representation of the objects relied upon by people during pregnancy and motherhood and register these people historically and presently. @designingmotherhood could enrich the Wellcome Collection as it provides valuable contemporary perspectives that would further contextualise many objects that form part of their current core collection.
Objects linked to pregnancy and maternity have commonly been collected in science museums. Millar Fisher, Antonelli and Winnick argue that these objects should exist generally in the design canon and in design collections in museums. So why don’t they? Could this be due to gender disparity in museums? The following argument is based on gender data that exists for women and therefore this is the data that I will focus on.
According to the Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey released in 2018, despite forming the majority of the staff base in museums, women remain underrepresented in leadership positions (National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2019). The consequence of this is a lack of an authoritative female voice in the museum and the subsequent products attached to women remaining overlooked, disregarded or absent from design collections. Women have been involved in design in various ways, they have acted as historians, theorists, practitioners and consumers (Buckley, 1986). Yet they are often unacknowledged in design history, the design canon and museum collections.
“When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Our entire culture is riddled with them… The stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future. They are all marked — disfigured — by a female-shaped ‘absent presence’” (Criado-Perez, 2019).
Discussions about gender disparity both historic and present have continued as evident from the cited literature by Buckley and Criado-Perez, the gender data presented is telling of the improvements that need to be made in the museum sector and society as a whole.
However recent additions of the Tampax Menstrual Cup to the Rapid Response Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 2019 and mid-century maternity clothing to MoMA’s design collection in 2017 show that attitudes are shifting and female voices are being heard (fig.7)(fig.8). There could be many reasons for this, one is that women can frequently communicate with greater ease online about women’s rights issues (Abrahams, 2017). This is being referred to as fourth-wave femisim which spans on from the earlier feminist movements dating from the late 19th century, to the 1960’s and 1980’s. Women are using online platforms including Instagram to raise awareness and bond over past and current discrimination. Although this provides women with greater agency, issues of descrimination against women persist. In contemporary society, one could argue that the current gender gap is not formed deliberately or maliciously, it is purely a bi-product of a way of thinking that has been adopted for decades. Regardless we must acknowledge that there has been a slow shift and readdressing of female representation in collections, museums and society. Progress that has been made is a start but there is still much work to be done.
TENDER LOVING CARE
What comes with acquiring objects for museum collections is a great responsibility for their care. Whether this is the curator’s, collections manager’s or specialist conservator’s, the task of preserving and ‘stabilising’ the object for future display and access is a complex one. These figures act as “cultural guardians… charged with the long-term duty of preserving and presenting the patrimony of a nation, culture or community” (Knell, 1994). The commitment of care required by the museum and its staff is evident. When it comes to collecting digital objects such as apps and emojis to mention just a couple, the challenge is even more fierce, nevertheless with the rapid growth and impact of technology on society the necessity for museums to collect digital objects is unavoidable. Fortunately the outlook towards this challenge looks bright as many museums including the Wellcome Collection are actively searching for digital material that expands and complements current collections (Wellcome Collection, 2018). This is a form of responsive collecting that is being considered and adopted as exemplified by the acquisitions such as Flappy Birds app by the V&A and the first 176 emojis created in 1999 by MoMA.
Museums are developing their digital preservation efforts. There is a general consensus that practice and progress in this area in under active development (Wellcome Collection, 2019). The Wellcome Collection in particular stresses its invested efforts for the continued development and ongoing maintenance of the infrastructure required to preserve digital collections (Wellcome Collection, 2019). The collection itself remains in a state of flux in relation to the objects that it acquires and the supporting networks established in order to maintain more complex objects such as the digital. Issues and efforts such as these directly influence the collection of @designingmotherhood and equally illustrate the importance of this being part of current museum collections, in particular the Wellcome Collection.
CONCLUSION
Research and analysis of @designingmotherhood has demonstrated the complex conversations occurring around objects and people linked to pregnancy and motherhood. The project seeks to validate these objects and reassess their importance in order for their affiliated societal groups to gain recognition in the design world, museums and society.
Online platforms are increasingly providing users with a space for appreciation and criticism of many topics including objects, raising awareness of the material culture of motherhood which until now has previously been scarcely talked about. This adopted behaviour of sharing by Instagram users has developed active communities that have formed solidarity with one another and contributed to global movements such as fourth-wave feminism. Instagram’s statistics illustrate its popularity and projects such as Designing Motherhood choosing this platform show its effectiveness as a communicative tool. The varied, rare material generated through @designingmotherhood and its presence are an indication of how platforms like this are contributing to design discourse and shaping perceptions of designed objects.
The argument for @designingmotherhood forming part of the Wellcome Collection exposes the historical connection between the objects featured in the feed and the existing collections in science museums. However the Designing Motherhood project highlights the absence of objects linked to motherhood and pregnancy in general design collections, a reason explored for this was gender disparity in museums. The study of existing gender gap data referred to women and revealed not only the lack of females in directorial and decision making roles in the museum but also the imbalance of voice and objects on display. Recent recognition and developments around the topics of menstruation, reproduction and maternity have led to large museums such as the V&A and MoMA attempting to address the imbalance. This progress is encouraging but must continue.
Digital objects such as @designingmotherhood are being recognised by museums for their importance in enriching their collections but also in painting an accurate picture of societal life. As the digital realm evolves so do museum collections and society. There will be a greater place for objects such as @designingmotherhood in the future as the digital realm expands and increases its presence in museum collections.
While this essay in parts has demonstrated the importance of increased representation and equality for women, the same is true for all underrepresented minorities whose exclusion from museum creates a visible bias in the collections.
The affected groups form a large proportion of our population and their representation in the design canon, collections, museums and society has been minimal if not completely non existent. However the sharing and exchange of knowledge surrounding these objects linked to motherhood is providing them with a new status, validating them and demonstrating the contributions they have made to design and pregnant people. The taboo status surrounding these objects and discourse is gradually fading and the evidence presented in this essay exposes the gradual acceptance and integration by museums and society of the people that these objects represent. In contemporary society the efforts of pregnant people are not going unnoticed, this is aiding recognition as a whole. But how can this momentum continue?
There are several suggestions; assessing, recognising and rebalancing gender disparity in museums and society. Talk about gender bias, normalise topics, objects and the experience linked to pregnancy and motherhood. Be acceptant and embracing of the continuous flux of collections, definitions of design and society. Recognise the importance of the digital in terms of objects but as representative of vast movements and communities. Collect prime examples of these communities and significant discourse. All of these suggestions will make design collections, museums and society richer, opening up perspectives, shaping a more balanced future. It’s time to recognise the progress made and the progress that is still required. It’s time for pregnant people to be seen!
REFERENCES:
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About the author:
Carmel Wilkinson-Ayre is a current MA Curating Contemporary Design student at Kingston University, London and former Exhibition Co-ordinator. She holds an a BA in 3D Design (Ceramics and Glass) and has experience and specialist knowledge in British and international craft and collectable design. She has curated and co-curated several contemporary craft showcases in the commercial sector. Her masters at Kingston University was sponsored by the Scottish International Education Trust. Her additional research specialisms include public programming for underrepresented audiences.
