Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births

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Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births

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A first-of-its-kind consideration of the arc of human reproduction through the lens of design, Designing Motherhood is a book, exhibition, a StoryBank oral history project, and a series of public programs in collaboration with Maternity Care Coalition.

06/18/2026

"Pregnant Female Anatomy" (1491) by Joannes de Ketham (15th Cen.) in the collection of the Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library. Spotted in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's current exhibition on Raphael by friend of DM Lauren Rosati.

From the exhibition website: Raphael’s mother died of childbirth-related complications in 1491, the year this hand-colored woodcut print was made. Two of his siblings died in infancy. Knowledge of gynecology and obstetrics was scarce, and pregnancy and childbirth extremely dangerous, and infant mortality rates were astronomically high in this era.

06/06/2026

Marcia Marcus Self-Portrait with Baby, 1971.

Marcus was a pioneering painter who died last year in her late 90s. Michelle's smart former MFA Boston colleague, Debra Lennard () is publishing a book and opening an exhibition this summer on Marcus' work and it looks wonderful. by the book and go see the exhibition!

Amongst many other aspects of MM's career -- which has been wholly under researched until very recently -- are her portraits of family and motherhood. Happy to have been there to witness this early idea spark and to see these great fruits several years later.

From a great article in Artnet last year on MM's work by Katie White:

"In the 1960s, both Marcus’s daughters Jane and Kate were born. For Marcus, always an independent mind, motherhood proved a place of deep creative fodder in an age when having a child was often regarded as the death knell for an artistic career (her husband at the time also embraced childcare, bucking conventions of the era).

She even made art on the days of her children’s births. “There’s a letter she’s written from the hospital room where Jane has just been born and she’s saying, ‘I snuck in a camera and a sketch pad and charcoal and I’m going to make some drawings. And I’ve taken some pictures. I don’t think I was allowed to,'” Prendergast said. “The fact that she had babies did not let a 24-hour labor practice stop her one bit.” On the subject of the birth of her second child, Marcus often recounted that she didn’t put her brushes down until her contractions were three minutes apart."

06/05/2026

Jess T. Dugan (American, b. 1986)
Self-portrait with Vanessa and Elinor (2 days old), 2018

We localize the DM checklist wherever the exhibition goes. At our second venue, the amazing MassArt Art Museum, we got to include the work of and it has remained a hands-down favorite for us and for audiences ever since.

We were therefore thrilled to receive a copy of Jess' new book, Love Pictures, this week. It is stunningly beautiful, a landmark book not just for photography but for all historians and writers and readers who think about themes of belonging, family, and the passage of time. We got a lump in our throat several times while reading through.

DM team member was honored to contribute an interview to the book (pics in stories).

Jess' creative practice centers around an exploration of identity—particularly gender and sexuality—through photography, video, and writing. As a q***r, non-binary person, Dugan’s work is motivated by an existential (and deeply human) need to understand and express themself and connect with others -- and oh, does their work do that in an exhibition context, and then some.

In this diptych, they share the birth of their first child. Their intention is to create work that facilitates intimacy and encourages empathy, understanding, and critical conversations about identity in contemporary social life. For us, also enabled audiences to see postpartum mesh underwear, a key design that often remains hidden. We are forever grateful to have been allowed to include this work in the DM show!

Super congrats to Jess and Charlotte Cotton and Radius Books. And thank you to MFA Boston curator, Karen Haas, who introduced Jess to us in the first place some years ago. Karen, you opened up new worlds for us and the DM project 💗

05/29/2026

These beautiful porcelain works by artist Ann Agee () make our hearts soar.

Thanks to the wonderful team at for introducing us to them this week on a visit to Wisconsin where Agee will have a major retrospective exhibition in 2027.

Agee smartly references the history of porcelain decorative figurines but instead of depicting pastoral scenes, she shows us the quotidian moments and joys of her own daily life that might otherwise go unseen and unremarked.

This includes the birth of her own children, Lucia and Emilio, from the early 2000s, madonna figures from 2020-21, a birth class (so good!!), and a carer carrying an infant from the 1990s.

We also got a sneak peek of some of the other works that will be on display -- we can't share pictures here so you'll just have to go see the exhibition!

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The earlier images here are courtesy P.P.O.W Gallery and the latter are from the collection website at PAFA in Philly 🙏

05/26/2026

She's almost five years old ...

Published in September 2021, the DM book remains a project of which we're hugely proud. It reflects the stories, voices, histories, ideas, urgencies, joy, and pain across the arc of human reproduction through chapters that focus on one hundred designed objects, systems, and ideas.

We are so lucky that it is home to a host of stellar contributors. Designed by the wonderful Natasha Chandani and Lana Cavar of .

Available from all good bookstores near you. We're always grateful when folks spot our book out in the wild and tell us, or send a copy to a friend ❤️

05/25/2026

"Evening Bath," 2026 by .

👌

05/23/2026

There's a lot to unpack here ... too much for an Instagram caption. (For further reading, look at the beautifully written chapter -- thanks Amber! -- on home birth in the DM book).

This account of a home birth was made in 1968 at a moment in time many that many birthing people wanted to reclaim their birth experiences from medical spaces where they were not listened to and weren't given agency.

The concurrent narrative present in this story is of the whiteness of US hippiedom where class and race privilege often made it easier to escape the yoke of inadequate systems and institutions, medical or otherwise (and often appropriate iconography from other cultures while doing so – in this case, from India).

It's also possible to see this as foreshadowing the separate-yet-overlapping current and controversial "free birth" movement.

The notion of childbirth as "natural" presented here is as dogmatic as its overmedicalization. It's the first image we've seen of a ma*****na pipe during labor for pain!

The photography in the book is absolutely gorgeous – but there's a moment of pause as one realizes both author and photographer are men. The story is being told from the perspective of a birth partner (which is such an important perspective to have!) but yet it is visually depicting a deeply intimate moment with a lens trained closely on a woman and her baby.

And yet, for the authors (and, one assumes, the mother whose consent was given to make the book), this is the point.

Scroll to the last slide for a persuasive argument as to why birth should be far more visible for everybody. After all, everybody on earth experiences it at least once, yet it remains very far from public view.

That has changed somewhat since 1968. Some of the images here remind us of the wonderful photographs by Heji Shin of babies crowning which were included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

Overall, the book is a fascinating historical document that needs very careful reading. We're glad to have it on our bookshelf as part of a much wider pantheon of the many different ways in which birth has been depicted over decades and centuries and millennia.

05/17/2026

Ni**le shields but make 'em nutty ...

cc -- we included Silverettes in the DM book and have had ni**le shields in a range of materials, including wood, metal, glass, and lead (!), in the DM exhibitions. This Belgian pair in the collection of Dr. Agnés Tondreau-Versailles were the first walnuts we've ever spied! 🌰 🥜

05/16/2026

OK, we're having a lot of fun asking you to guess the purpose of some of the objects we found while on the research trip to Belgium.

We have just a few more – some fun, others a bit heavier in context, topic or nature. Here is the next one – a ceramic from the 19th century.

Hint: This one is spiritually related to our previous post. Any guesses as to what this object is for?

Address

304 Pearl Street
Providence, RI

Website

http://designingmotherhood.org/

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