Veiled, Unveiled! The Headscarf.

The show "Veiled, Unveiled! The Headscarf" at Vienna's Weltmuseum (World Museum) puts headscarf diversity on display. "The goal of the exhibition is to reveal the transformations that the headscarf has undergone and that have been forgotten, repressed or those that are simply unknown," Steinmann said. The exhibition doesn't present the headscarf as a clothing object that is always one of choice, and it doesn't shy away from contemporary controversies over head coverings in Islam, acknowledging in its description that "some Muslim girls and young women are forced to veil themselves" in public.

The show also acknowledges the fact that in general, a headscarf "far too often … still represents a man's word on a woman's body." Yet curator Steinmann highlighted that a headscarf cannot only be seen as a religious expression of female subordination to men.

By placing these perspectives side-by-side with those where the headscarf is a sign of Christian piousness or female emancipation or even high style, "Veiled and Unveiled" shows how head coverings are anything but the exclusive domain of one religion or culture or worldview.