“Medusa Looks Back” Event with Janina Ramirez and Jacqueline Klooster
By Margalida Pujol | Culture | 18 May, 2026
Cover Illustration: Sappho and Alcaeus, 1881. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ceded by The Walters Art Museum / Unsplash
Soft news reporter Margalida Pujol covers the Rijksmuseum’s “Medusa Looks Back” event, where Jacqueline Klooster and Janina Ramirez unpack how women’s stories are being retold through myth, history and art.
Museums are not only curators of artworks and artefacts that show visitors the traces of the history of humanity. These institutions also carry on the significant labor of questioning, reinventing and repurposing culture within contemporary needs. The Rijksmuseum, the most important museum of Amsterdam, seeks to preserve and share knowledge and give space for new understandings and innovative contributions in art and history. In 2022, the Women of the Rijksmuseum project started, with the mission of recognizing the role and importance of women in this framework. Across March 2026, this research group constructed a programme of activities such as talks, guided tours and workshops in honour of Women’s Month. Specifically, they organised a talk, titled “Medusa Looks Back: Women, Power and Mythmaking”, with authors Jacqueline Klooster and Janina Ramirez, which was also linked to the museum’s new exhibition, “Metamorphoses”. The lectures, including a dance performance and followed by a Q&A session, focused on the impact of historical and mythological women in contemporary discourse and retellings of these events or narratives.
Jacqueline Klooster: From Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Contemporary Feminist Myth Retellings
The first presenter was scholar Jacqueline Klooster, professor at the University of Groningen. Her research delves into contemporary classical mythology retellings, such as the popular novels by Madeline Miller (author of Circe and The Song of Achilles) and Natalie Haynes (author of Stone Blind and A Thousand Ships). She calls this framework the “rewriting turn” of classical myths from women’s perspectives. This process challenges the conventions of the original mythology, often sexist or classist, but also preserves the canon they represent, as newer generations are introduced to the world of classical mythology. She explains that these novels often offer a new literary genre or plot, a new motivation or a new evaluation of the old canon. Also, she recently published the book Medusa in de spiegel (Medusa in the Mirror), in which, based on these popular retellings, she offers personal explorations of mythical figures.
During her presentation, she talked about some of the central themes of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, including the force of change, power and gender, visual beauty, objectification and loss of voice. In this sense, she explained how certain female figures of mythology have been reinterpreted in contemporary literature and art, underlining the mentioned processes and Ovid’s aim to make the reader think about the purpose and message of the stories. Particularly, she focused on the myths of Medusa, Galatea and Europa, contrasting their most well-known representations with innovative artworks, narratives and films that reinterpret these myths.
The end of the presentation concluded with the current affective and empathetic turn of our stories, highlighting Gisèle Pelicot’s iconic motto, “Shame must change sides.” In this sense, she inspired the audience to find their own story and express it in a new way, in line with the narrative beauty and power of these retellings. Klooster is a very intelligent scholar who raises important questions around how contemporary literature reshapes the classics through more modern, diverse and inclusive notions of womanhood, gender and sexuality.
Janina Ramirez: Women’s History and European Female Legends
After an exciting and energetic contemporary dance performance by group PACT+Dans, the second presenter took the stage. Janina Ramirez is a writer and historian who has worked in many cultural television programmes for the BBC. In 2025, she published the book Legenda: The Real Women Behind the Myths That Shaped Europe, in which she delves into the lives of several female historical figures who helped craft European national identities. Through her dynamic and funny presentation, she showcased how women’s position in history is one of decline, only now resurging. For instance, in ancient civilizations such as those in Çatalhöyük (9000 years old) and Crete (3500 years old), women took significant roles in society, and early myths depict women as powerful and strong.
However, she explains how throughout the centuries the presence of women in myths was softened and romanticized, and women’s social positions and rights decreased. During the 18th century, the inheritance of the ideology of the separate sexes and the processes of nation-building meant more control and impositions towards women. Nevertheless, Ramirez got the whole audience to laugh at her recounting of strange anecdotes of important historic women such as Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), a famous self-made mystic who enjoyed extraordinary autonomy for the time, and Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), a journalist and women’s rights advocate who expressed her frustration at women’s inequality. To finish, Ramirez questioned the sexist claim that women didn’t contribute to the cultural building of nations. She told the story of Elizabeth of Thuringia, a charitable woman who founded hospitals and fed the poor. Her figure is so important that many nations today seek to claim her figure in their ideas of national identity. Therefore, she defends how not only men are responsible for the construction of communities and politics.
After her very lively and engaging lecture, I had the pleasure of getting my book signed by her and we briefly discussed her project. Ramirez is a remarkable woman who aims to tell the stories of women that have been undermined in past narratives and are now brought to a different light.
The Exhibition: Metamorphoses
Until May 25, visitors to the Rijksmuseum can attend the exhibition titled Metamorphoses. The exhibition aims to visit Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses, written in 8 A.D. and encompassing more than 250 myths, through sections delving into themes such as motion, music, and the body. The selection includes over 80 artworks from collections all around the world by artists such as Caravaggio, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Antonio da Correggio and René Magritte. I highly recommend visiting this exhibition if you have the chance, and allowing yourself to think beyond what the artworks initially have to offer, either by reading the museum’s descriptions or exploring the situations and feelings these ignite in you. Also, in light of Klooster’s and Ramirez’s presentation, I invite you to wonder about the portrayals of women in the exhibition’s artworks, as well as the impact of mythology and history on your life and development of identity.
Margalida Pujol is a university student in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
