If you create or own art concerning menstruation or menopause
and are interested in showing it on thesepages (it's free!), contact MUM
Marie Claire magazine (Italian edition) featured several
of the above artists in an article about this
museum and menstruation in 2003. The newspaper Corriere della Sera (Io Donna
magazine) (Milan, Italy) and the magazine Dishy (Turkey) showed some of
the artists in 2005 in articles about this museum.
 
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The Art of Menstruation at the Museum of Menstruation and
Women's Health
Orant
by Joseph Tonna
Mr. Tonna seems to have created the top artwork specifically for the
record album cover (small picture) entitled "The Effect of Estrogens
in the Menopause," copyright 1960 by Ayerst Laboratories, which he
also designed. (Maybe this should be called The Art
of Not Menstruating.)
A blurb on the cover explains the figure as "familiar to art historians
and archaeologists as the Orant, [and] is often found in early frescoes
and mosaics. For both pagan and Christian, it symbolized supplication for
deliverance. The Orant portrayed here represents womankind's
appeal for deliverance from the age-old afflictions of the menopause."
(For more on menopausal afflictions, a controversial
subject, see the lecture, 26 June 1998, also
sponsored by a pharmaceuticals company.)
The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary adds that the Church
regarded the orant as especially significant because "it recalled the
position of the Saviour upon the cross." Compare Female
Crucifixion, by Martina Hoffman.
Webster's Third International Dictionary reports that the orant was
"used in early Christian art as a symbol of the faithful
dead."
By the way, all eight speakers on this LP are men.
My thanks, again, to Kathleen O'Grady,
a friend of this museum from the beginning, author of Sweet
Secrets: Stories of Menstruation, doctoral candidate at the University
of Cambridge (England), and creator of the MUM list
of books about menstruation in English. She writes that she saw this
album at a garage sale and "couldn't resist" buying it for 25
cents. She then kindly mailed it to her MUM.
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Next artist: Jessica
Wagner
See all the artists in the links in the left-hand
column.
If you create or own art concerning menstruation or menopause and
are interested in showing it on thesepages (it's free!), contact MUM
See
also Bea Nettles' art The Moonsisters
© 1997 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute
work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission
of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
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