Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births

The Maternity Care Coalition (MCC) will produce a multi-site exhibition, catalogue, and series of public programs that investigate 100 designs that have defined the material culture and experience of maternity over the last 100 years. The project will examine how bodies influence design—from fashion fixations to pain relief—and how design influences bodies. The work will explore historical and contemporary conversations around reproduction, maternity, and childbirth across communities and cultures, and it will offer programs in which audiences can share their own stories. The project is curated by Michelle Millar Fisher, who is the Ronald and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Amber Winick, an independent design historian and curator. The MCC’s collaborating venues include the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Center for Architecture + Design, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, which will facilitate workshops and events with design students and professionals.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.