The Vagina Museum in Bethnal Green has postponed their menopause exhibition due to lack of funds.
The GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the upcoming Menopause: What’s Changed? exhibition only raised just over 25% of the funds needed to put it on next month.
The Vagina Museum announced: “We approached more than 15 arts and heritage funders, and none of them chose to fund this exhibition.
“We find ourselves in a situation where nobody wants to fund menopause.”
The exhibition was set to open on 18 October, World Menopause Day, but only £14,608 of the desired £58,000 was reached on GoFundMe.
It was going to cover the history of menopause, how it became medicalised, LGBT+ experiences and education about early menopause.
Menopause is when the menstrual cycle ends and involves a change in hormones at an average age of 51.
The Vagina Museum normally receives funding from different arts and heritage funds for their exhibitions, but no organisation was interested in funding this topic.
Interim Director Zoe Williams said: “Half the world goes through menopause, or will go through it at some point in their lives, but there’s still a real silence around it.”
Williams said they would need another £20,000 to create the educational and creative exhibition she wants to curate.
She said: “People who go through menopause are simultaneously 30 years too old and 30 years too young to be of interest to others. So it really falls through the cracks.
“Again, symptoms can be quite debilitating, but it’s not disabling enough to be of interest to arts and heritage funders.”
The exhibition is now planned for early February 2025, and if they do not receive the extra money, they will go ahead anyway on a smaller scale.
In a 2023 study, UCL found that more than 90% of postmenopausal women were never taught about menopause at school.
It also found that 49% of participants did not feel informed about the menopause.
Williams said menopause had been receiving slightly more traction recently, but it still isn’t part of a cultural conversation.
This exhibition comes nearly four years since the start of presenter Davina McCall’s TV programme, Sex, Myths and the Menopause, in which she told her menopause story.
The Vagina Museum is the world’s first bricks-and-mortar museum dedicated to the vagina.
Previously it has had exhibitions dedicated to endometriosis and busting myths about vaginas.
Featured image: Vagina Museum
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