Our Women: 125 of Dunedin’s Extra-ordinary Women

The fabric of our city

September 2018 marks 125 years since New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote. To acknowledge this anniversary, Otago Museum has commissioned 125 portraits of extra-ordinary Dunedin women, to be exhibited in the Beautiful Science gallery.

The project, Our Women: 125 of Dunedin’s Extra-ordinary Women, is about the wāhine in our community who make the city hum, who make it the interesting, creative, forward-moving city in which we have chosen to live. They are the women of now – Dunedin’s history is rich with remarkable, glass ceiling-smashing women, and this exhibition emphasises that our women today also carry that strength and imagination.

Two local professional photographers, Sinead Jenkins and Nicola Wilhelmsen, have been enlisted to create the immense exhibition. Their images will be supplemented by deeply personal captions written by the women themselves, offering an insight into the many layers of what it means to be a woman in Dunedin.