GEMM Celebrates Women’s History Month 2020
The intersection of Women’s History Month with the year-long celebration of the 19th Amendment means there are tons of great exhibitions and programs on tap across the U.S. Here’s a brief rundown of some of our favorites:
Did you know there’s an International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, OH? Or a U.S. Army Women’s Museum and Hall of Fame in Virginia? Or a Museum of Women’s Resistance in Brooklyn? Visit Travel Pulse for a quick introduction to 21 museums that celebrate women all year long.
Voices of Resilience: The Intersection of Women on the Move In Massachusetts, the Springfield Museums highlights diverse “hidden figures” and narratives to “explore the collaborative and interconnected stories of social, educational, and cultural change as defined by women, women of color and others on the move to a more inclusive and just world.” The exhibition was curated by Janine Fondon, Assistant Professor and Chair of Undergraduate Communications at Bay Path University as well as President and CEO of UnityFirst.com, a 2 million+ online communication network that engages people in ‘real-world’ topics and events regarding diversity and inclusion.
Five women artists of Palestinian heritage from Gaza, Jordan, Australia, and the U.S. exhibit their performance, video, paintings, photography and sculpture at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, DC.
This exhibition at the Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY, is a self-styled as a call to action. “Inspired by the centenary of women’s suffrage in the United States, a movement that first gained momentum…in western New York State, our theme was chosen to shine a light on the progress women have made both within and outside the art world.” The exhibition also underscores the fact that work by women make up a fraction of art represented in most museums.
Seeking to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience and action, FAC fosters collaborations between arts institutions that aim to make public their commitment to social justice and structural change. You’ll find an abundance of arts and cultural resources at FAC’s website, including artist conversations, presentations, and tours. And quotes…..great quotes.
Using objects, scholarship, and stories the goal of the Smithsonian American Women History Initiative is to “create, educate, disseminate, and amplify the historical record of the accomplishments of American women.”
The Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science looks to its own holdings to reinstall its permanent galleries this year with a special exhibition highlighting images of women from American and European artists from the 3rd through 21st centuries and work by American female artists dating from the 1920s through the present.
In response to decades of sexist pictures, suffragists constructed a visual vocabulary that challenged ideas of women’s place in society, expanded notions of citizenship, and laid the foundation for modern media politics. This exhibition presents the images that leading activists wanted the public to see—and some that they wanted to hide. This exhibit is on view at the Schlesinger Library, where in 1943, Massachusetts suffragist Maud Wood Park (Radcliffe College Class of 1898) donated her papers to Radcliffe. That Woman’s Rights Collection became the foundation of the Schlesinger Library. More than 75 years later, the Library continues to preserve essential women’s history documents and make them accessible to the public.
2020/20+ Women @ NBMAA Celebrating the Impact of Female-Identifying Artists throughout American History The New Britain Museum of American Art will present 2020/20+ Women @ NBMAA, a year-long series of seven groundbreaking exhibitions devoted exclusively to women artists beginning January 2020. 100 years after women gained the right to vote, only 27% of major exhibitions are devoted to women artists worldwide. Challenging underrepresentation and celebrating diversity, artists featured will include Kara Walker, Anni Albers, Shantell Martin, Yoko Ono, Nancy Spero, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Carrie Mae Weems, Jennifer Wen Ma, and more.
Women Take the Floor“Women Take the Floor” challenges the dominant history of 20th-century American art by focusing on the overlooked and underrepresented work and stories of women artists. This reinstallation—or “takeover”—of Level 3 of the Art of the Americas Wing advocates for diversity, inclusion, and gender equity in museums, the art world, and beyond. With more than 200 works drawn primarily from the MFA’s collection, the exhibition is organized into seven thematic galleries. Interactive programming creates a dynamic space that welcomes visitor participation, and new rotations of artwork introduced over the run of the exhibition ensure that new voices and perspectives are available on each return visit.
Help the National Trust for Historic Preservation with their "Where Women Made History"—a multi-year initiative which includes discovering 1,000 places connected to women’s history. Have a place you’d like to share? Submit a photo and a short description on their website.
Be sure to check out this collaborative website, Women’s History Month, with listings for exhibits and programs from the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Art Gallery, the National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Do you have young readers in your home? These seven children’s books celebrating Women’s History Month will do the trick, teaching life lessons through the stories of women such as Mary Walker, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and pilot Beverly Bass.
