Exhibition “Calliope Austria and North Macedonia”

The Austrian Embassy in cooperation with the National Gallery of the Republic of North Macedonia has the pleasure to announce and to invite you to the exhibition entitled “Calliope Austria and North Macedonia”, Women in Society, Culture and the Sciences.
The exhibition will be opened on March 12, 2024, at 7:00 pm, at the Cifte Hamam
Women have far too often been forgotten, overlooked and marginalized in Austria’s and North Macedonia’s official historiography — a fact that lends all the more importance to this exhibition’s attempt to survey the past 200 years in light of the biographies of important Austrian women. Austrian women, whose talents, will-power and determined courage have helped shape and enrich their country. Their lives and their works, which account for at least half of Austria’s intellectual identity, are to be recognized here in the form of prominent examples — in full knowledge of the inevitable gaps, some of them scandalous, that such a form of portrayal entails.
This exhibition surveys the life stories of aristocrats, artists, salon women, scientists, women’s rights activists, politicians, actresses, musicians, physicians and stage directors in chronological form. For the very first time, four Macedonian female artists will be presented in this context. The arc thus drawn extends from the early 19th century to the present. A common theme evident throughout is women’s struggle for emancipation, with all its attendant triumphs and setbacks. From Biedermeier-period desires for freedom to our 21st century, much has been accomplished. But one also sees clearly that true equality has not yet been achieved, with much indeed still to be done.