Heritage Days are becoming more and more feminine

“Women have been erased from history,” Marie Guérini, general secretary in Ile-de-France of the HF association, which promotes gender equality in the arts and culture, told AFP. explain this initiative.

European Heritage Days... and Matrimony

The idea was launched in 2015 by the group bringing together HF associations in France. First concentrated in a few cities like Toulouse and Tours, it has since spread to Lyon, Marseille and Lille.

In seven years, 400 women have been put forward, according to the collective.

Rouen and Rennes have renamed their Heritage Days this year as Matrimony and Heritage Days, a step already taken by Nantes in 2021.

Even if the city of Paris is a partner of the initiative in Ile-de-France, the town hall has however not changed the name it gives to the event. "Paris is anchored in Europe, these are the European Heritage Days, so it is not possible to add heritage", underlines Marie Guérini.

However, similar initiatives are flourishing in Europe: Liège, Brussels and even Florence have had their Heritage Days for several years.

Bringing forgotten artists back to life

Dramatized neighborhood walks, declaimed poems or even interpreted music: "the meetings of the patrimony days are much more lively than those of the heritage", according to Marie Guérini.

"We are trying to bring back to life the creators of the past who have been invisible for centuries. The poetesses, we are going to read them; the composers, we are going to play them" and the female painters, "we are going to put them on stage" she explains.

For this edition, HF Ile-de-France has for example decided to honor a Franco-Spanish painter from the middle of the XNUMXth century, Roberta Gonzalez, in a scripted visit to the Antoinette-Fouque space in Paris.

Visitors will also be able to take advantage of a literary walk in Paris in the footsteps of the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, a screening of the choreographer Janine Solale or even a storytelling tour of the last owners of salons in Paris. In total, more than 40 free events are taking place this weekend in Ile-de-France.

Local figures in the spotlight

In Lyon, the theater company Cybèle invites you to stroll through the streets to meet the "unknown Lyonnaises": from the women of the Revolution to the first high school for young girls in the city.

In the city center of Strasbourg, a walk is organized to discover little-known Alsatian women. Through this guided tour, visitors will walk in the footsteps of Adelaide Hautval, "Righteous among the nations", of Louise Sheppler, inventor of the nursery school, or even of the volcanologist Katia Krafft, killed by a fiery cloud in 1991.

Rennes, for its part, offers a bike ride to admire buildings designed by women such as that of the Regional Contemporary Art Fund, designed by Odile Decq. A first for the Breton city, which has already filled up since all the visits are complete.