The Women’s Museum in Hittisau in the heart of the Bregenzerwald region has been a place of encounter that gives voice to women’s issues for 20 years. The museum was founded in the year 2000 by Elisabeth Stöckler. Since that time, it has housed more than 45 exhibitions on topics related to women in culture, society, the arts or architectural history. The museum highlights both regional and international aspects. To complement the exhibitions, the Women’s Museum in Hittisau offers a substantial number of specially organised custom tours, lectures, workshops, concerts, readings and film presentations. The communications programme is differentiated and offers both adult- and child-specific events.

Current Exhibition

STOFFWECHSEL (“FABRIC CHANGE”)
A critical look at fast fashion
A call for conscious consumption

How are consumption and sustainability, fashion and gender connected? Who makes our clothes and under what conditions are they made? What does fashion do to us and we to it? The exhibition sees itself as a platform for exploring these complex interdependencies. It takes a critical, feminist look at fast fashion and highlights the connections between consumer behaviour and the exploitation of women worldwide.

Constantly new trends, textile giants that bring dozens of new collections onto the market every year under precarious production conditions, shredded new goods from international luxury labels and the destruction of ecosystems through mountains of textile waste: fashion and the fashion industry are increasingly in the spotlight in terms of consumer behaviour, manufacturing processes and sustainability.

• More information on the next exhibition
  24 November 2024 – 31 October 2025

Award winning architecture

The building, which was erected in 2000 by the Vorarlberg architectural firm Cukrovicz Nachbaur Architekten, is the recipient of several awards and was erected on the edge of a ravine that slopes steeply down to the Subersach stream at the site of an erstwhile gravel pit. The building houses a Women’s Museum as well as the local fire service and the Hittisau-Bolgenach music club’s rehearsal room.

While the fire service is oriented slightly towards the main street in the up-sloping terrain, the Women’s Museum in contrast is a wooden cuboid that seemingly floats above the fire service and opens up towards the village centre via a large glass front. A radical materials concept further reinforces the separation of the two functional areas by different spatial orientations. The fire service is composed of concrete, galvanised steel and glass. Meanwhile, the Women’s Museum follows the regional building tradition of only using untreated domestic silver fir for the walls, ceilings and floors.