Is the Vagina Museum closing for real?

The world’s first museum dedicated to the female body and healthcare launches a fundraising campaign to face “insurmountable rent payment” in London. From its mission to its history, here’s why it’s vital to keep it alive.

It was 2017 when Florence Schechter thought about the fact that the Penis Museum in Iceland had no vagina equivalent anywhere in the world. She was “pretty miffed (muffed?)” by that, but she also realized that the only way to remedy that was to make one. And she did.

Eight years have passed, and now the museum is facing an unprecedented crisis. A fundraising campaign has been launched and more than £70,000 crowdfunded within a few days.

HOW THE MUSEUM STARTED

The first and only museum about the female reproductive system was established in London, opening its first location in Camden Market, then relocated in Bethnal Green in November 2023. With the explicit mission of spreading knowledge, erasing the stigma and giving confidence to people to talk about gynaecological anatomy and health, the museum proposes an alternative narration of the most controlled thing on earth: the female body. Through temporary and permanent exhibitions, and a wide programme of workshops and events, issues like menstruation, menopause and endometriosis are freed from labels and taboos to be finally made visible and real.

CURRENT AND PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS

Menopause: What’s Changed? opened on 1st March 2025, exploring a phenomenon that concerns half the human race and that has, despite this, been silenced and stigmatized for centuries. Since the opening, more than 1700 people have visited the museum, which still “was forced to crowdfund this exhibition due to a lack of interest from arts and heritage funders”.

Covering four main areas ‒ anatomy, health, diversity and activism ‒ the permanent exhibition From A to V sheds light on the misinformation and lack of understanding around the gynaecological organs, protracted by millennia of misogynist society. Shame and embarrassment instead of confidence, support and open conversation: how much have women given up because of the stigma?

WHY HELP THE MUSEUM?

“The situation is dire” said the Director Zoe Williams. “Since its founding, the Vagina Museum has been a bold, unapologetic space for education, activism and community. We are a space to come together, learn and celebrate about the world’s most-misunderstood body part. We’ve been doing this for years on a shoestring budget with just about enough staff to keep functioning. There’s no room to grow”.
With an initial goal of £60,000, the fundraising has been extended to try to reach £100,000 in order to secure the future of the museum. “This is no longer about surviving, but about being able to thrive in a world with so many forces still against us. We stand defiant in a world that needs us, even when it does not always want us”.

As Barbara Kruger reminded us in 1989, for centuries women’s bodies have been the battleground on which men in power have legislated. Vital issues like abortion, endometriosis, period policies and tampon tax have been downplayed, if not ridiculed, showing how nothing interests the political class less than the actual needs of women.
May the Vagina Museum always be there to compensate for the inadequacy of the Institutions, and may it live long enough to see the social change we need.