07/07/2021
Great exhibition title 🎩❤️🎩 I think Anne would have gone along 🏔🧗
We are thrilled to announce our major exhibition Petticoats and Pinnacles, which will run from Saturday 10 July until 28 May 2022 - find out more and book your visit at www.nls.uk/exhibitions
Petticoats and Pinnacles opens alongside The Eye of a Stranger, which explores the life and letters of diplomat’s wife Henrietta Liston. and runs until 6 November
Petticoats and Pinnacles explores the relationship between women and mountains, focusing on individual Scots who travelled, climbed and responded creatively to mountain environments, both in Scotland and across the globe. Along the way they overcome traditional ideals of femininity, masculinity and convention.
Exhibitor Paula Williams has said that the exhibition is a result of considerable research and work, and that the women highlighted overcame many obstacles to live their lives of adventure.
Alongside being celebrated in their field of work (as poets, diarists and artists) the women featured also scaled the world’s mountains.
Petticoats and Pinnacles curator, Paula Williams, said:
“The Library has many wonderful books about the Scottish mountains and mountaineers. But something had always seemed to be missing - where are the women? When I became curator of the Library’s Mountaineering & Polar Collections in 2011, I was determined to find them – and out of this initial research grew our exhibition Petticoats & Pinnacles: Scotland’s pioneering mountain women.”
It was not only social stigma, but also the availability of equipment that caused barriers for women climbers, many of whom had to make to with inadequate gear.
However, the pioneering women quickly found ways of getting around the constraints of long skirts and petticoats by rigging them up to be shorter, or more usually by resorting to breeches when out of view.
One of the featured climbers, Jane Inglis Clark, said in 1938: “When I appeared in my boys’ suit ... and wearing my big hobnailers, my own mother could not endure the spectacle and cried, “Oh what a fright you look!”
The exhibition title, Petticoats and Pinnacles, reflects the robust make-do attitude of these Scottish pioneering mountain women.
Petticoats and Pinnacles will open to the public on 10 July and runs until 28 May 2022. This display is free, and booking is essential via www.nls.uk/exhibitions
Image: Ladies Scottish Climbing Club
