‘IT IS TIME’
Strategies for integrating women’s history
in public history
MA thesis Public History Ellen Schuurman (10003956) University of Amsterdam Thesis advisor
Dr. M.S. Parry Second reader Prof. dr. G.A. Mak Date
Table of contents
1. Women’s public history: an introduction 1
2. Historic house museums
2.1. The paradox of women’s history 8
2.2. ‘Think for yourself’: alternative perspectives 13
3. A national women’s history museum
3.1. The debate about a women’s history museum 21
3.2. Criticism from various sides 24
3.3. Contested online exhibitions 31
3.4. American Museum of Women’s History 39
4. Digital women’s history
4.1. Digital scholarship: rich with possibilities 44
4.2. Clio’s feminist revolution 48
4.3. Reimagining the museum 52
4.4. The Wikipedia gender gap 56
5. Conclusion: A call for reinterpretation 61
1
1. Women’s public history: an introduction
‘Women have been left out of history not because of the evil conspiracies of men in general or male historians in particular, but because we have considered history only in male-centered terms. We have missed women and their activities, because we have asked questions of history which are inappropriate to women. (…) The central
question [women’s history] raises is: What would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of women?’1
These words were spoken by feminist scholar and author Gerda Lerner (1920-2013), proclaimed ‘godmother of women’s history’ by the New York Times.2
During her studies at Columbia University in the 1960s, Lerner was unhappy with the way historical scholarship largely ignored the role women had played in the past. To set this straight, Lerner became one of the founders of the field of women’s history, teaching courses and developing America’s first women’s history graduate program at Sarah Lawrence College, New York in 1972.3 Lerner also wrote ground-breaking academic works, such as the book The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (1979). Together with other renowned scholars as Joan Wallach Scott and Louise Tilly, Lerner embodied a movement in the United States that sought to challenge traditional historical scholarship, which until then had primarily focused on the history of upper-class, white, heterosexual men. Women’s historians lamented how the male experience was considered to be the a measure of all things significant, leaving out the history of the other half of humankind entirely.4 Women’s history became a vibrant field of study in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and as a result of these pioneering historians’ extensive and important research it has received general acknowledgement within academia.5 However, breaking through the status quo of traditional historical narrative is not easily accomplished, and many women’s historians feel that much still remains to be accomplished as ‘acceptance of women’s history as equal has not quite occurred.’6
While women’s history has become an increasingly visible field in academic
1 G. Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (1979), p. 178.
2 W. Grimes, ‘Gerda Lerner, a Feminist and Historian, Dies at 92’, New York Times, January 3, 2013, accessed
on January 31, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/us/gerda-lerner-historian-dies-at-92.html.
3
Idem.
4 G. Bock, ‘Challenging Dichotomies: Perspectives on Women’s History’, in: Karen Offen, e.a. (ed.), Writing
Women’s History: International Perspectives (1991), p. 1.
5
B. Smith, ‘Women’s History: A Retrospective from the United States’, Signs, vol. 35 no. 2 (2010), p. 727.
2 scholarship, women’s stories are still very marginally represented in public history, according to many historians and museum professionals. Public history is broadly defined as history outside of the university, including the myriad ways in which history is consumed by the general public – museums, exhibitions, memorials, battlefields, parks, walking tours, documentaries, films, digital projects and other ways history can be showcased and
communicated. One of the first historians to point out the lack of women’s history in public history was Edith Mayo, a prominent women’s historian who has worked as a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History for over forty years. In her article ‘Women’s History and Public History: The Museum Connection’ (1983), Mayo addressed how academic scholars have been slow in recognizing public history as a legitimate field of history theory, linking this strongly to the presence of women in public history.
Organized in volunteer organizations, women were the driving force behind the historic preservation movement of the early nineteenth century. Even though these women organizations secured the preservation of various historic sites, scholars never recognized them as true historians, because they lacked academic training. Furthermore, because the traditional definition of historic preservation was based on the idea of history as the study of ‘great men’, only historical sites related to men were preserved, resulting in a complete neglect of women’s history. According to Mayo, this was still mostly the case in 1983.7
With the exception of a few museums, Mayo argued that most historic sites lacked an interpretive context for women’s history in their exhibits, and that for the public’s understanding of history it would be critical to address the central role women have played in history.8 Ever since Mayo published her pioneering article, many public historians have addressed this gender gap. For example, in a rather activist article called ‘Nail This To Your Door: A Disputation on the Power, Efficacy, and the Indulgent Delusion of Western
Scholarship That Neglects the Challenge of Gender and Women’s History’ (2010), gender historian Susan Lee Johnson expressed a very critical point of view on the lack of inclusion of women’s history in American public history:
7 E. Mayo, ‘Women’s History and Public History: The Museum Connection’, The Public Historian, vol. 5 no. 2
(1983), p. 67.
3 ‘By now, the particular contributions of women’s and gender historians should deeply inflect the writing of North American western history. It should no longer be possible to produce landmark books and articles and websites and museum exhibits and
documentary films that don’t reflect this influence. But, it turns out, it’s more possible; indeed, it’s the norm.’9
Thus, despite a growing amount of academic studies and written material on women’s history, many women’s historians feel that the first step of ‘putting women back in history’ has not yet been taken by a large amount of museums, historic sites and other cultural institutions. In this thesis, I will analyze the visibility of women’s history within different fields of public history. In order to paint a broad picture of the status of women’s history, I have decided to focus on three areas of public history: historic houses, national museums and digital history projects. There is a wealth of women’s history stories to be found in all of these areas, yet they starkly differ in their historical practices and possibilities. I will use the writings of women’s
historians, public historians and other scholars as well as newspaper articles and other sources to assess the ways in which historic houses, museums and digital projects have been praised or criticized for their representation of women’s history. I will mostly focus on public history within the United States, as it is in this country that some of the most interesting
developments concerning women’s public history are taking place. My main objective is to examine which strategies are used to include the often marginalized and hidden stories of women into the historical narratives of these sites.
It is important to note that there is very little scholarship on how to incorporate women’s stories into traditional history. Gerda Lerner and some of her contemporaries of the 1970s and 1980s argued that in order to make accounts of the past reflect a more universal experience, what was needed was an entire reinterpretation of history. Lerner saw no ‘evil conspiracy’ that left women out of the history books, but found that the standards we use to consider something historically significant are mostly focused on male-dominated areas such as politics and the military – resulting in less attention to the achievements of women.10 In order to understand the impact women have had on the past, she argued, we should look at history in an entirely different way:
9 S. Johnson, ‘Nail This To Your Door: A Disputation on the Power, Efficacy, and the Indulgent Delusion of
Western Scholarship That Neglects the Challenge of Gender and Women’s History’, Pacific Historical Review, vol. 78 no. 4 (2010), p. 606.
4 ‘Only a history based on recognition that women have always been essential to the making of history and that men and women both are the measure of significance, will be truly a universal history.’11
However, little has been written on how to do so in practice. In a book chapter written in 2003 – twenty years after her early article on women’s public history – Edith Mayo argued that despite growing interest in women’s history by the public, there is still ‘little published material (…) on the actual practice of how to include women in exhibitions and how to conceptualize exhibits that incorporate a feminist framework from the outset.’12
Just as in 1983, Mayo called on museum professionals to challenge the traditional narrative, and examine ‘whose point of view, and therefore whose value system, is being enshrined and legitimized in constructing the historical record.’13
When the male experience is the norm, women’s history will always be regarded as ‘deviant’ or ‘less than’. Instead, Mayo believes women’s history exhibits should put the experiences of women central to their story. The ‘little published material’ Mayo referred to is mostly focused on which
approaches should not be used to integrate women’s history. One strategy often applied in public history sites has especially been condemned by many women’s historians. It is known under several names, such as ‘women worthies’, ‘compensatory history’ and ‘add-women-and-stir.’14 They all refer to an approach in which a handful of notable, exceptional women are used to highlight the accomplishments of women – or in the words of women’s historian Sonya Michel, ‘whereby one simply attempts to find female parallels to prominent male figures and patterns of accomplishment.’15 Gerda Lerner already criticized this approach in the 1970s, arguing that it does not only lead to an exaggerated, celebratory history of women, but that it is also not representative of the experiences and lives of women as a whole.16 According to historian Bonnie Smith, there is a prevalent idea that women’s history is simply about ‘filling in the gaps’ left by traditional history, and that there will be no need for women’s history
11 Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past, p. 180.
12 E. Mayo, ‘Putting Women in Their Place: Methods and Sources for Including Women’s History in Museums
and Historic Sites’, in: G. Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through Historic
Preservation (2003), p. 112.
13 Mayo, ‘Putting Women in Their Place: Methods and Sources for Including Women’s History in Museums and
Historic Sites’, p. 113.
14 G. Lerner, ‘Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges’, Feminist Studies, vol. 3 no. 1 (1975), p.
5.
15 S. Michel, ‘The National Women’s History Museum Apparently Doesn’t Care Much for Women’s
Historians’, New Republic, April 7, 2014, accessed on 31 January, 2017,
https://newrepublic.com/article/117259/national-womens-history-museum-apparently-doesnt-much-care-w.
5 anymore after some women are inserted into these gaps.17 This idea ignores the fact that history will still be viewed in male-defined terms. Many women’s historians have called for a complete reconceptualization of history to analyze the past through women’s eyes – to show ‘the full diversity of women’s history without portraying it as a seamless path from corset and kitchen to boardroom and the halls of Congress.’18
How then could women’s history best be represented? In the last two decades, public historians have published more material on this issue, including practical tips and guidelines. In 1995, a group of four staff members and three outside scholars made a booklet for the National Park Service (NPS) titled Exploring a Common Past: Researching and Interpreting Women’s History for Historic Sites. The main message of the NPS guide is that ‘the whole of history needs to be rethought because part of the earlier interpretation may have been
inaccurate or misleading.’19
The authors of the booklet argue that in order to find women’s stories where they are least expected, historians and museum professionals should be asking the right questions.20
In a 2003 essay, public historian Heather Huyck defined a number of these questions, such as: ‘What were these women’s experiences? What difference did they make? How are their actions reflected in these sites today?’21 In June 2015, Huyck also co-wrote an article called ‘The First Step for Putting Women Back in History’ together with Karen Nickless from the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites. Published on the website of the
National Trust for Historic Preservation, the article was aimed at the staff of the many historic sites that according to Nickless and Huyck are still mostly in the dark about women’s history, ‘wandering with their lanterns, trying to find the women’s stories represented there.’22
The article is filled with seemingly obvious tips that many public history sites are still struggling with according to Nickless and Huyck – such as ‘avoid stereotypes’ and ‘let women speak for themselves by using direct quotes’. The article’s main message is that women’s history is everywhere, if only one is willing to search for the often hidden stories.23
17 Smith, ‘Women’s History: A Retrospective from the United States’, 735.
18 Michel, ‘The National Women’s History Museum Apparently Doesn’t Care Much for Women’s Historians’. 19
‘Exploring a Common Past: Researching and Interpreting Women’s History for Historic Sites’, National Park Service, 2003, accessed January 27, 2017,
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/npshistory/womenshistory.pdf.
20 Idem.
21 H. Huyck, ‘Proceeding From Here’, in: G. Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through
Historic Preservation (2003), p. 361.
22 K. Nickless and H. Huyck, ‘The First Step for Putting Women Back in History’, National Trust for Historic
Preservation website, 9 June 2015: https://savingplaces.org/stories/preservation-tips-and-tools-the-first-step-for-putting-women-back-in-history/#.WDMnEPnhDIU.
6 This thesis consists of three main chapters, each examining one specific kind of public history. Of the three areas, historic house museums are arguably the most well-known sites to present American history. Every year, millions of high school students and families visit the preserved houses of – usually white and wealthy – men deemed significant in history. Yet, these houses are also among the most criticized by public historians for the very traditional stories they communicate, with primary attention to the men of the house and little to no awareness for the house’s other inhabitants.24
In the second chapter I will examine the arguments of public historians against the traditional practices of many historic house museums, and I will also offer some examples of houses that have taken alternative, sometimes controversial paths to represent women’s stories in a different way.
In the third chapter I will consider the case study of the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM), a nonprofit organization that since 1996 has campaigned in Congress for a national museum for women’s history on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. Public historians have been critical of the lack of visibility of women’s history within museums, even though they appear to be ‘women’s worlds’ when it comes to employees.25
Historian Amy Levin has argued that women experience difficulty entering the upper ranks of museum administration – and that this has far-reaching consequences concerning the stories that are and are not represented in museums.26 While some scholars believe women’s history should be interwoven with traditional narratives to tell a universal story, others consider traditional history to be limiting or even exclusionary towards the stories of women. For this reason, the leadership of the NWHM believes women’s history would be best told in a separate museum. The way in which they represent this history has been contested, however, and as I will demonstrate in the chapter the NWHM has become a controversial organization that has been met with a lot of resistance from various sides.
Central to the fourth chapter will be a number of digital women’s history projects. Digital history is a relatively new area of public history, but the internet has had a lot of influence on the study of history. With a large amount of primary sources and secondary literature as well as scholarly research now accessible online – sometimes even for free – scholars and students have the opportunity to examine a broad array of subjects from new points of view. This could mean a great deal to otherwise marginalized histories, and some of
24
W. Leon and R. Rosenzweig, ‘Introduction’, in: W. Leon and R. Rosenzweig (ed.), History Museums in the
United States: A Critical Assessment (1989), p. xii.
25 A. Levin, ‘Part 1: Women in Museum Work’, in A. Levin (ed.) Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge
Reader (2010), p. 13.
7 the projects brought up in the chapter have demonstrated an excellence use of the online sources available to create challenging and innovative exhibitions. However, as we will see, despite the internet’s promise of openness and inclusivity there are still obstacles to be found that prevent women’s history from achieving an equal position to that of the history of men. As a student of the University of Amsterdam, I am also very interested in the position of women’s history within public history in the Netherlands. For this reason, I will use the conclusion of this thesis to attempt to examine whether there are lessons to be learned from the strategies used in the United States to include women’s history in the Netherlands.
Although I recognize the difference in traditional historical practices between the Netherlands and the United States, and I know that it therefore might not be entirely possible to argue that certain strategies would necessarily be successful in both countries, I do find that there are interesting comparisons to be made. According to Dutch women’s historians, women’s and gender history was a vibrant field in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but this trend has not been carried on into the twenty-first century.27
In 2016, women’s history journal Historica interviewed the American women’s scholar Kathy Davis about this matter. Davis is currently a senior research fellow at VU University in Amsterdam. She has argued that compared to the United States, the Netherlands suffers from a theory called ‘the law of the handicap of a head start’, meaning that an initial head start may result in a handicap in the long term.28 The Netherlands was one of the first countries to really explore research areas such as gender and women’s history, but according to Davis this has resulted in a dismissive attitude from the Dutch towards these areas
nowadays. Whereas in the United States women’s history is still an active and dynamic field of study, Davis believes the Dutch consider it to be ‘yesterday’s news’.29
It will be interesting to assess in which way this has influenced the visibility of women’s history in public history the Netherlands, and to which extent the Dutch can learn from the myriad of developments happening currently in the United States.
27 G. Bijl and R. Klinkeberg, ‘Genderview 2012’, Historica, accessed 31 January, 2017,
http://www.gendergeschiedenis.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=55.
28 G. Bijl and L. Geerlings, ‘Genderview zomer 2016’, Historica, accessed 31 January 2017,
http://www.gendergeschiedenis.nl/index.php/tijdschrift/genderview/142-genderview-zomer-2016-nathalie-zemon-davis.
8
2. Historic house museums
2.1 The paradox of women’s history
Across the United States, thousands of historic houses have been preserved and transformed into museums. According to the calculations of historian Patrick Butler, more than 6,000 historic house museums were developed between the end of World War Two and the year 2000 – this means that on average, a new museum emerged every three days during this period.30 Together with battlefields, cemeteries and other historic sites, these house museums have become an important feature of America’s cultural landscape.31 The first efforts to preserve historic residences started in the mid-nineteenth century, undertaken mostly by women volunteer groups. According to historian Barbara Howe, ‘(…) women generated publicity, raised money, and bought and restored properties to save some of the nation’s most treasured landmarks, sites that reflected the dominant perspective on the country’s history.’32 A well-known example is the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, led by Ann Pamela
Cunningham, which purchased the estate of former president George Washington for national heritage in 1858. In 1968, Coretta Scott King established the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Change in honor of her late husband’s legacy.33
And to this day, organizations such as the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites play an important role in the preservation of historic landmarks.
Despite their perceived significance in portraying American history, historic house museums are increasingly criticized for their conservative practices and traditional view on history. In May 2015, peer-reviewed journal The Public Historian dedicated an entire issue to historic houses, called ‘Reimagining the Historic House Museum’.34
In the introduction article, public historian Lisa Junkin Lopez argued that making historic house museums feel
30 P.H. Butler, ‘Past, Present and Future: The Place of the Historic House Museum in the Museum Community’,
in: J. Donnelly (ed.), Interpreting Historic House Museums (2002), p. 28-29.
31 R. Graham, ‘The great historic house debate: Do we have too many? The surprising fight over a quirky, dusty
and endangered American institution’, The Boston Globe, August 10, 2014, accessed 30 January, 2017,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/08/09/the-great-historic-house-museum-debate/jzFwE9tvJdHDCXehIWqK4O/story.html/.
32 B. Howe, ‘Documenting the History of Women in Preservation: Women in the Nineteenth-Century
Preservation Movement’, in: G. Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through Historic
Preservation (2003), p. 18.
33 ‘About The King Center’, The King Center, accessed 27 January, 2017,
http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-king-center.
34
L. Junkin Lopez, ‘Introduction: “Open House, Reimagining Historic House Museums’, The Public Historian, vol. 37 no. 2 (2015), p. 10.
9 inviting is almost a Sisyphean challenge – ‘once they are devoid of the people who animated them in the first place, domestic places tend to become mausoleums.’35 This view is shared by some of her colleagues – the article ‘The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums’ in the same issue identifies the most common critiques visitors have on historic house museums as ‘boring, old-fashioned doll-houses’ and ‘fossilized, static windows into the past, rather than lively and breathing areas’.36
For decades, women’s historians have also been very critical of the practices of historic house museums. There lies somewhat of a paradox in the fact that while women’s organizations have so directly been involved in the preservations of many of these houses, the majority of them still hold very traditional views on the role of the woman in the house. In the first part of this chapter I will identify the most important arguments
women’s historians have against traditional historic house museums, and in the second part I will examine some examples of historic houses that have chosen deviating and sometimes more controversial strategies in portraying women’s history.
As mentioned before, public historian Edith Mayo already addressed the paradox of the involvement of women in the preservation field in her article in 1983. While women’s organizations were at the forefront of historic preservation, Mayo argued that it should be remembered that at the time, historic and cultural preservation theory was based on the definition of history as the study of the deeds of ‘great men’.37
During the nineteenth century there were very specific ideas about the role of the woman within society, often described as the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’.38
Middle-class women were mostly restricted to the domestic sphere because the public sphere was reserved for men only, but at the same time women were also regarded as the moral heads of household and society, and as culture bearers and preservers.39 It was in this respect that women became active in the preservation field, preserving the historic houses of great men, which according to Mayo was seen as a ‘sanctioned, even exalted’ activity for women.40
However, these women were rarely regarded as historians, and were even increasingly disregarded as the preservation moment became more professional.41
Leaving out the stories of every resident but the wealthy man does not reflect the
35 Junkin Lopez, ‘Introduction: “Open House, Reimagining Historic House Museums’, p. 10.
36 F. Vagnone, D. Ryan and O. Cothren, ‘The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums: Evaluation
Methodology for Historic House Museums’, The Public Historian, vol. 37 no.2 (2015), p. 99-100.
37 Mayo, ‘Women’s History and Public History: The Museum Connection’, p. 65. 38
K. Christensen, ‘Ideas versus things: the balancing act of interpreting historic house museums’, International
Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 17 no. 2 (2011), p. 159.
39 Mayo, ‘Women’s History and Public History: The Museum Connection’, p. 65. 40
Idem.
10 actual history of the everyday hustle and bustle in the house. In Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation (2003) – edited by Gail Lee Dubrow, professor of architecture and urban planning, and Jennifer B. Goodman, director of the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance – women’s historians reflect on gender issues within public history from their own experience of working at or being involved in historic houses and other sites. From this collection of essays, a number of hurdles and obstacles can be extracted that these public historians have encountered in trying to increase the awareness of women’s history within historic sites that are not specifically focused on women.
According to Edith Mayo, one of the reasons for the lack of visibility of women’s history is that despite of decades of scholarship, the legitimacy of women’s history is still questioned – from within the museums’ administrations as well as the public. Even women themselves as well as men often asked Mayo the question: ‘What could you possibly
exhibit?’42. A similar argument was brought up by renowned women’s historian Louise Tilly in 1989, who remembered a ‘crusty old’ historian once asking what difference it would make to be aware of women’s participation in history.43
Mayo argued that for many, women’s history is still not considered ‘real’ history.44
She addressed curators and historians personally when warning against ‘administrative disinterest’ and ‘trivialization of women’s history’ and argued that it is vital to clearly establish the importance of the women’s story: ‘Have the necessary historical and ideological ammunition ready. The claim to legitimacy must be clear, persuasive, and forceful’.45
Another issue that often prohibits the exhibition of women’s history is of a more practical rather than ideological nature. Former assistant director of the Pennsylvania
Humanities Council, Kim Moon, was part of a pilot project aimed at increasing the visibility of women’s history in Pennsylvania in 1992. Moon remembers that of the over five hundred historic sites that Pennsylvania contained at the time, only one of them prominently featured women. According to her, one of the main reasons for this was that most of the sites and museums were chronically underfunded.46 The everyday demands of managing a historic site ‘virtually eliminated the opportunity to conduct meaningful historical research’.47
Thus, before the Pennsylvania Humanities Council undertook action to introduce the pilot project,
42 Mayo, ‘Putting Women in Their Place: Methods and Sources for Including Women’s History in Museums and
Historic Sites’, p. 127.
43 L. Tilly, ‘Gender, Women’s History and Social History’, Social Science History, vol. 13 no. 2 (1989), p. 439. 44
Mayo, ‘Putting Women in Their Place’, p. 127.
45 Idem.
46 K. Moon, ‘“Raising Our Sites”: A Pilot Project for Integrating Women’s History into Museums’, in: G.
Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation (2003), p. 250.
11 ‘there was no collective activity focused on the history of women in the state or the
preservation and interpretation of women’s history at historic places’.48 Moon’s example of Pennsylvania illustrates a common situation in which historic sites and small museums often have to rely on reduced personnel and monetary means, which severely affects their
possibility for researching new narratives, such as the lives of women.49
A third reason is addressed by Gail Lee Dubrow in the opening chapter of Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation. Dubrow has noticed that there are ‘some frontiers of women’s history still considered too controversial to address in public’.50
One of her examples is the history of sexuality and sexual orientation, which is often deemed ‘inappropriate’ for a family audience. For example, with the exception of the Stonewall Inn, none of the more than seventy thousand properties on the National Register of Historic Places are listed on the basis of its significance in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender history.51 Dubrow’s argument is supported by Page Miller, who herself has worked on the Women’s History Landmark Project (WHLP), which focused on increasing the amount of historic landmarks related to women.52 Miller recalled how in 1989 the WHLP nominated an
apartment building in New York City formerly inhabited by Molly Dewson, a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and a key member of Franklin Roosevelt’s political team. Dewson lived there with her partner, as well as a number of other ‘unmarried professional women’.53
The WHLP considered the building an important site for understanding the life of working women in the 1920s and 1930s, but the National Park Service overseeing the landmark list refused to include it. According to Miller, ‘the first draft of the nomination form for this building came back (…) with ‘Lesbian?’ written in large letters across the front page’.54
Similar issues have arisen over other women’s history topics. Dubrow recalled how the listing of Margaret Sanger’s birth control clinic in New York as a National Historic Landmark even caused
48 Moon, ‘“Raising Our Sites”: A Pilot Project for Integrating Women’s History into Museums’, p. 250.. 49
L. Church, ‘Documenting Local African American Community History: Some Guidelines for Consideration’, in: Max van Balgooy (ed.), Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites (2015), p. 70.
50 G. Dubrow, ‘Restoring Women’s History Through Historic Preservation: Recent Developments in Scholarship
and Public Historical Practice’, in: G. Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through
Historic Preservation (2003), p. 12.
51 Dubrow, ‘Restoring Women’s History Through Historic Preservation’, p. 12.
52 P. Putnam Miller, ‘Reflections on Federal Policy and Its Impact on Understanding Women’s Past at Historic
Sites’, in: G. Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation (2003), p. 320.
53 Putnam Miller, Reflections on Federal Policy and Its Impact on Understanding Women’s Past at Historic
Sites’, p. 327.
54
Putnam Miller, Reflections on Federal Policy and Its Impact on Understanding Women’s Past at Historic Sites’, p. 328.
12 political resistance.55
Because traditionally only residences of the male rich and famous were preserved, the majority of house museums tend to exclusively represent their perspectives. In recent years, an increasing number of public historians have spoken up about this very conservative representation of history. In the first paragraph of their article ‘Domestic Work Portrayed’ (2003), Karie Diethorn and John Bacon have argued that a more diverse range of stories should be included:
‘Traditionally, America’s historic house museums have celebrated the great
personalities and mammoth events of the past in a view characterized by traditional definitions of political, economic and social achievements. The individuals recognized for these achievements are predominantly white adult males of British or Western European heritage. Other populations – women, children, and racial and ethnic minorities – have been included in the drama as supporting cast members, but usually they play their parts offstage, incidental to the main action.’56
A nation’s history is painted by both the experiences of men as well as women – separating them leads to two distinctly different pictures of the past. However, incorporating women’s history into the already existing narrative created by men also distorts our understanding of the past, as it would try to fit women ‘into the categories and value systems which consider man the measure of significance’, as Gerda Lerner already argued in 1974.57
According to the public historians of Restoring Women’s History , this ‘add women and stir’ approach is how a lot of historic sites deal with women’s history. The historians are very critical about it,
because it leads to a limited, stereotypical representation of women. For example, in many cases women are portrayed only in relation to the man of the house: as a mother, wife or daughter.58 Such exhibitions are still male-defined and seen from a male point of view – or, as Gail Dubrow has said, they lead the visitor to view women only ‘through the narrow lens of their subordinate relationships to notable men’.59
Furthermore, public historian Patricia West has argued that women’s history in house museums is often romanticized, ‘featuring elite
55 Dubrow, ‘Restoring Women’s History Through Historic Preservation’, p. 12.
56 Diethorn K. and J. Bacon, ‘Domestic Work Portrayed: Philadelphia’s Restored Bishop William White House –
A Case Study’, in: G. Dubrow and J. Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation (2003), p. 96.
57 Lerner, ‘Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges’, p. 7.
58 Miller, ‘Reflections on Federal Policy and Its Impact on Understanding Women’s Past at Historic Sites’, p.
333.
13 women as tranquil and charming wives to the ‘great man’ of the house in a kind of historic ‘feminine mystique’.60
West stressed that such a point of view eradicates, for example, much of the household labor performed by female domestic servants. This turns the house into a static entity, rather than a ‘dynamic, functioning space that could reveal the daily lives of past women.’61
Furthermore, using the dichotomy of the ‘separate spheres’ – with the man’s place being in the public and the woman’s in the domestic – traditional historic house museums often paint an idealized picture of the woman within the home as pure, submissive and domestic.62 In a blogpost responding to the 2015 historic house museum issue of The Public Historian, vice president of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites Lori Osborne argued that what most of these museums are missing is a recognition of how these houses truly functioned for women: as a home as well as their primary workplace.63 Many female activists, writers and artists worked from home, but even for women who were ‘only’ wives, daughters or sisters, the house was to a certain extent a place of work – even though most of this labor was hidden or went unrecognized. Osborne argued:
‘The desire to make the historic house museum feel more ‘homelike’ – with smells of baking bread, beds to sleep in, couches to sit on – is forgetful of the fact that someone had to work to make the home and that someone was most likely a woman.’64
2.2 ‘Think for yourself’: Alternative perspectives
According to the article ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’ (2015) by public historians Sarah Pharaon, Sally Roesch Wagner, Barbara Lau and Maria José Bolaña, there are some historic houses that have an ‘uncomfortable relationship with the very structures they interpret and preserve’.65
They represent histories that transcend the walls of their
60 P. West, ‘Uncovering and Interpreting Women’s History at Historic House Museums’, in: G. Dubrow and J.
Goodman (ed.), Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation (2003), p. 85.
61 West, ‘Uncovering and Interpreting Women’s History at Historic House Museums’, p. 84.
62 Christensen, ‘Ideas versus things: the balancing act of interpreting historic house museums’, p. 159. 63
Osborne, L., ‘Re-Imagining the Historic House Museum: A Workplace for Women’, American Association for State and Local History, March 31, 2016, accessed January 27, 2017, http://blogs.aaslh.org/re-imagining-the-historic-house-museum-a-workplace-for-women/.
64 Idem.
14 historic home. Often, these histories do not always represent the ‘winner’s point of view’ and have therefore been ignored or conveniently forgotten.66 Lisa Junkin Lopez has called these houses unorthodox in their programming, offering what she considers to be ‘radical
hospitality’. ‘(…) They have thrown open their doors to welcome new audiences and offer profoundly intimate experiences with history.’67
In this chapter I will briefly touch upon a few examples of such historic houses that have distinctly different strategies than traditional house museums – the Jane Addams Hull House, the Mathilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, and the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice. By bringing formerly forgotten or ignored women’s stories back to light, these historic houses provide visitors with alternative and challenging perspectives on history.
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago is frequently praised for its progressive exhibitions. Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a social reformer who founded the social settlement Hull-House in 1889 together with her colleague Ellen Gates Starr. Situated on the west-side of Chicago – an area declared ‘unfit for human habitation’ at the time – Hull-House became the center of a powerful reform movement. Addams, Gates Starr and the several other female reformers that inhabited the house started community projects to help improve the neighborhood. They fought for all kinds of social issues, such as women’s suffrage, worker’s and civil rights, public health and public education.68
From the house, Addams built her reputation as ‘the country’s most prominent woman through her writing, settlement work, and international efforts to peace’.69 She was active in both local and national organizations and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 as a result for her involvement in the peace movement during the First World War.70 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once characterized Addams as ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ due to her challenges to the status quo.71
Jane Addams’ focus on social justice is also central to the current Hull-House
Museum. The museum has been described as not ‘(…) a repository of artifacts to be passively consumed, but a space where present-day reformers can interact with their own progressive
66 S. Pharaon et al, ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, The Public Historian, vol. 37 no.2 (2015), p. 62. 67
Junkin Lopez, ‘Introduction: “Open House, Reimagining Historic House Museums’, p. 11.
68 J. Scott, ‘Museum and Civic Discourse: Past, Present and Emerging Futures 2016 Working Group – Jennifer
Scott Case Statement’, National Council on Public History, accessed 27 January, 2017, http://ncph.org/phc/ncph-working-groups/museums-civic-discourse-2016-working-group/scott-case-statement/.
69 ‘About Jane Addams and Hull-House’, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, accessed 27 January, 2017,
http://www.hullhousemuseum.org/about-jane-addams/.
70 Idem.
71 P.T. Reardon, ‘Why You Should Care about Jane Addams’, Chicago Tribune, June 11, 2006, accessed 27
January, 2017, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-06-11/news/0606110193_1_jane-austen-abigail-adams-peace-and-freedom.
15 heritage’.72
What makes the Hull-House stand out from other historic house museums is that rather than being just an educational institution, it has created a dynamic sphere where visitors are stimulated to debate and discuss social and political elements related to Jane Addams’ activism. Rather than avoiding controversial topics, the Hull-House Museum actively confronts its visitors with issues such as immigration, poverty and sexual orientation.
According to an interview in 0 with the museum’s director at the time Lisa Lee, the museum staff’s motto is ‘Never again shall a single story be told as if it is the only one’.73
One particularly talked about exhibit in 2007 was called ‘Was Jane Addams a Lesbian?’. It featured a painting of Mary Rozet Smith, a close friend and possible lover of Addams. Visitors were invited to choose from a number of captions describing the
relationship between the two women that they felt would fit the Smith painting best. As a result of the project, the painting of Smith is now permanently displayed in Addams’ bedroom. With the help of the visitors’ response, the museum decided to describe their relationship in a way that leaves room for interpretation – as a ‘partnership’, but without drawing any definitive conclusions about the nature of the relationship. Some scholars were critical of the exhibit, fearing that speculation about Addams’ love life would overshadow her accomplishments in her career, and questioning whether such an intimate issue should be up for visitors to discuss at all.74 One commenter accused the museum of exploiting Addams’ sexuality for attention.75 However, other scholars welcomed more insight into Addams’ personal life.76 Director Lisa Lee said that in general, the response the museum received from its visitors had been positive and inquisitive, and that the chosen caption describes the
relationship in the ‘most honest way’.77
Public historian Susan Ferentinos has argued that this particular exhibit has presented LGBT history as an ‘exciting opportunity to discuss the realities of historic research’ that welcomes visitors into the historical process to perform their own analyses.78
Through its exhibitions, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum actively takes part in
72 A. Oxford, ‘Hull-House Museum: Open to the Counter-Public’, In These Times, October 27, 2010, accessed
27 January, 2017, http://inthesetimes.com/article/6533/hull-house_museum_open_to_the_counter-public.
73 Idem. 74
N. Schoenberg, ‘Hull-House Museum poses the question: Was Jane Addams a Lesbian?’, Popmatters, February 12, 2007, accessed January 27, 2017, http://www.popmatters.com/article/hull-house-museum-poses-the-question-was-jane-addams-a-lesbian/.
75 T. Lacy, ‘The Jane Addams “Project”: Irresponsible, Sexist or Legit?’, Thinking Through History, accessed
January 27, 2017, https://thinkingthroughhistory.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/the-jane-addams-project-irresponsible-sexist-or-legit/
76 Schoenberg, ‘Hull-House Museum poses the question: Was Jane Addams a Lesbian?’.
77 S. Ferentinos, ‘Lifting our skirts: Sharing the sexual past with visitors’, National Council on Public History,
accessed 27 January 2017, http://ncph.org/history-at-work/lifting-our-skirts/.
16 contemporary debates about social issues. As part of a working group organized by the
National Council on Public History about the role of museums within social activism, current Hull-House Museum director Jennifer Scott posted a response about her own experiences within the field. Scott explained she has worked with ‘national significant historic house museums in urban centers, helping to re-envision them as sites of activism.’79 In the spirit of Jane Addams, the Hull-House Museum works closely together with over a hundred
community partners, from food justice to Black Lives Matter and gender rights activists. According to Scott, these partnerships are considered unusual by some within the museum profession.
‘Working consistently with feminist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal museums, which represent histories of working, poor, disenfranchised communities, and communities of color, I find myself repeatedly placed in a category of ‘radical museology’ (…). But is this radical? Is it radical to center non-elite histories and to promote inclusion in museums?’80
Instead of becoming a static window into the past, the Hull-House Museum has placed itself in the middle of public dialogue by not only presenting itself as a memorial, but also as a place for continued social justice activism in the spirit of Jane Addams.
The historic home of Addams’ fellow social justice activist Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) also diverts from traditional practices. In many historic houses, women’s history is uncritically related to the domestic objects of the home, reinforcing old-fashioned gender stereotypes.81 To counteract this tendency, the staff of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation decided not to focus on Gage’s domestic life, but rather to use the house as a vehicle to communicate Gage’s ideas and actions. According to the article ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, the Foundation aims to tell ‘not the story of the people who lived in the house, but rather the social justice work of the woman of the house’.82
As a human rights activist, Gage fought for issues that are still considered pressing today, such as Native American sovereignty, reproductive rights, equal pay and violence against women. Similarly to the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the Gage Foundation makes an effort to make a
79
Scott, ‘Museum and Civic Discourse: Past, Present and Emerging Futures 2016 Working Group – Jennifer Scott Case Statement’.
80 Idem. 81
Christensen, ‘Ideas versus things: the balancing act of interpreting historic house museums’, p.1
17 connection to present-day issues through the past life of a female historic figure.
Another similarity to the Hull-House Museum is that the Gage Foundation attempts to actively engage its audience. Upon entering the home, visitors are asked to keep two rules in mind: ‘Check your dogma at the door’ and ‘Think for yourself’ – the latter phrase was coined by Gage herself when asked about her most important life lesson.83 Through these guidelines, the staff of the museum has created a space for dialogue, leaving room for visitors to share their own ideas, experiences and assumptions about issues related to Gage. An example of this is a reproductive rights program called ‘Who Chooses?’ organized in 2012.84 After a year of developing and testing the program, trained volunteers of the Gage Foundation held several dialogue sessions on the issue of reproductive choice. With a great variety of participants from Planned Parenthood employees to devout Catholics, the program was very successful. Some participants even suggested the program should be developed into a national model to bring people together on the issue.85 Currently, the Gage Foundation has created such a strong reputation for itself based on its innovative and daring programs that it is argued supporters and donors would feel betrayed if the museum would stop pushing boundaries and turn into ‘yet another dusty museum’.86
Kim Christensen, an archeologist who in 2011 helped develop Matilda Joslyn Gage’s house into a museum, has revealed another strategy the staff uses to shed a different light on the historic house as a center for social justice. Like most other female reformers at the time, Gage essentially worked from home. Her house is therefore not exclusively part of the domestic sphere, but also the arena for her political activism. Everyday objects and utensils present in the home – which traditional historic house museums would relate to a woman’s domesticity – are reinterpreted in a whole new way in Gage’s house. Christensen comes up with the example of tea wares, which the staff of the Gage Foundation has interpreted in a very different social context than usual:
83
Pharaon et al, ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, p. 64.
84 S. Wagner, T. Eckler and M. Leighton, ‘Productive Discomfort: Dialogue, Reproductive Choice and Social
Justice Education at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center’, Journal of Museum Education, vol. 38 (2013), p. 164.
85
Pharaon et al, ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, 64.
18 ‘Instead of reinforcing images of Victorian ladies, pinkies raised, having afternoon tea in the formal parlous, we can envision Gage working over tea with [Elizabeth] Stanton and [Susan B.] Anthony to plan their protest at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial convention, or writing The History of Woman Suffrage.’87
Through this example, Christensen demonstrates how household materials and other everyday objects can simultaneously be part of private life as well as political or community actions. Making this connection visible to visitors adds a whole new layer to the history of the house, one that challenges traditional notions of the role of the woman within the home.
Not only women are a marginalized group within historic house museum practices – the same could be said for people of color, as well as the LGBT community. One historic house that aims to change this is the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, scheduled to open in 2020. Murray (1910-1985) was a human rights activist, feminist, lawyer, author, educator and poet, as well as the first African American woman to become an
Episcopal priest.88 Historian Susan Hartman stresses that no woman was more important than Murray in integrating women’s rights and civil rights.89
She was a key figure in the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as a strong advocate against the discrimination of people of color. Her main objectives were to demonstrate that race and sex discrimination were inextricably linked, and to create awareness for women’s rights within the civil rights movement.90
Despite her influence, however, she is little known among the general public, in contrast to some of her fellow women’s and human rights activists of the civil rights era. The authors of the article ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’ argue that Murray’s relative anonymity can be explained by her having three intersecting marginalized identities: she was a woman, a person of color, and a member of the LGBTQ community.91 Even though Murray achieved great things in her life, the authors argue that she does not get the credit she deserves because ‘American master narrative simply ignores the existence of LGBTQ people of color no matter their contributions’.92
The future Pauli Murray Center will not be a traditional house museum, but rather a
87 Christensen, ‘Ideas versus things: the balancing act of interpreting historic house museums’, p. 164. 88 Pharaon et al, ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, p. 66.
89
S. Hartmann, ‘Pauli Murray and the ‘Juncture of Women’s Liberation and Black Liberation’, Journal of
Women’s History, vol. 14 no. 2 (2002), p. 74-75.
90 Idem. 91
Pharaon et al, ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, p. 55
19 combination between a historic house and a community center – a space that reflects both history and contemporary social justice activism.93 The center will be created in her former childhood home in Durham, North Carolina. The house is currently in a bad condition but is safe from demolition, and has been nominated by the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites as a National Historic Landmark in 2016.94 Durham is significant as a place where Murray experienced both the blatant racism of the segregation era, as well as the hope of emancipation. For this reason, the future center will not only focus on Murray’s past, but will also use her life as a key to ‘understanding contemporary issues, especially those that vexed Murray during her lifetime: racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia.’95
The organization of the Pauli Murray Project has already experimented with some community projects, such as human rights related walking tours, youth poetry contests, and a
documentary about women of color in Durham.96 The authors of ‘Dangerous Memories’ argue that the future center, while placed within a historic house, could maybe not be
considered a museum as we know it – rather, they say, it is a ‘safe space to honor and grapple with Pauli Murray’s spirit and story by embracing contemporary issue.’97
The three examples of atypical historic house museums mentioned in this chapter have in common that rather than focusing on the historic house to interpret the women’s lives, they focus on the women’s careers to contextualize the house and its objects within. This strategy very much challenges the traditional notion of the woman’s place being only domestic. It could be applied to other house museums as well. However, it is important to realize that Jane Addams, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Pauli Murray lived exceptional lives. They made a name for themselves and influenced society on a local and national scale, but not many other women were in the position to pursue such a career. The three activists are therefore not representative for the mass of women in the nineteenth century.
However, elements from their house museums could be used to reinterpret women’s history in other historic houses as well. Historic houses could increase their relevancy and social influence by connecting the story of their residents to current events and contemporary issues. Even if they wish to remain solely historical, they could learn something from the Hull-House’s multiple-perspective exhibitions, the Gage Foundation’s focus on dialogue and its message to ‘think for yourself’, and the Pauli Murray Center’s community projects related
93 Pharaon et al, ‘Safe Containers for Dangerous Memories’, p. 69. 94
Ibidem, p. 67.
95 Idem.
96 ‘Community Projects’, Pauli Murray Center, accessed January 27, 2017,
http://paulimurrayproject.org/connecting-durham-stories/.
20 to her three intersecting identities. These different approaches create the much needed room for new histories to appear at the surface and could help revitalize the field of historic house museums.
21
3. A National Women’s History Museum
3.1. The debate about a women’s history museum
Just like historic house museums have been criticized for their lack of women’s history, public historians and museum professionals have called out national and regional museums for persistently and predominantly representing an upper-class straight white male point of view. In a blog post in 2013, executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History Nina Simon was very critical of the ‘white male privilege’ she sees in the majority of American museums. Despite the increased amount of data and resources that can be used to challenge traditional narratives within these institutions, Simon still does not see any real changes to the heart of museums.98 According to her, efforts at inclusion are made only at a surface level. ‘When asked about diversity, (…) institutions can point to a particular program or initiative and say, ‘we've got that covered’.’99 For women’s history this is also a recurring phenomenon. When Edith Mayo retired from being a curator at the National Museum of American History, the museum dismantled her exhibition about President’s wives inaugural gowns because the people in power at the NMAH felt like they had ‘done women’ and should return to the museum’s earlier focus.100
This emphasis on ‘earlier focus’ means that the male experience is still central to the museum, and that the experiences of women are seen as a deviation from rather than essential to history.
The debate about the lack of diverse representation in the National Museum of American History has been ongoing for decades already. Marginalized communities have often expressed their disappointment in the museum, arguing that their history is excluded from the museum’s collection and its exhibitions. As a result, some of these groups have campaigned for their own institutes where their stories can be told in full. Already in 1915, African American veterans of the Civil War called for the creation of a museum that would focus on the history of their community – resulting after more than a century in the National Museum for African American History and Culture, opened in September 2016 by President
98 N. Simon, ‘On White Privilege and Museums’, Museum 2.0 weblog, March 6, 2013, accessed February 1,
2017, http://museumtwo.blogspot.nl/2013/03/on-white-privilege-and-museums.html
99
Simon, ‘On White Privilege and Museums’.
100 K. Offen, ‘Perspectives on Women’s Museum Projects from a Historian of women (or, been there, done that,
and some lessons learned)’, unpublished article on the website of the Coordinating Council for Women in History, accessed February 1, 2017,
22 Barack Obama.101 In their footsteps followed other communities, such as Native Americans and American Latinos. The former has already successfully campaigned for the National Museum of the American Indian, while the latter is still hoping to acquire a separate museum on the National Mall to highlight, celebrate and rehabilitate their experience of American history.102 Even though women are not a minority group, the marginalization of their history has led to people calling for a separate women’s museum as well. On a regional level, there already are several museums throughout the country dedicated to specific groups of women – amongst others, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the
International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland, the United States Army Women Museum in Virginia and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Texas. As of today, however, there is no national museum for the history of all women in the United States. At least, not yet.
Over the years, there has been much discussion about whether a national women’s history museum would be actually necessary. It stems from the long-standing debate whether the Smithsonian should allow separate communities to acquire their own museums. In 2010, cultural critic Edward Rothstein wrote an article in the New York Times called ‘To Each His Own Museum, as Identity Goes on Display’. Rothstein mocks ‘identity museums’ such as the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of American Jewish History, claiming they ‘end up distorting history by demanding the sacrifice of other perspectives.’103
It is an argument used against all museums focused on marginalized groups – why would you separate yourself from the rest by wanting a museum that caters to the
interests of your own community only, when we already have a national history museum for everyone? This is a very defensive argument that fails to acknowledge what some historians have been saying for decades: that a predominant focus on the history of white, middle-class, straight men already represents a distorted version of history.
Still, this argument is often used to protest against a national women’s history museum, as demonstrated by this statement of Republican Representative Vicky Hartzler in 2014:
101 K. Taylorjan, ‘The Thorny Path to a National Black Museum, The New York Times, January 22, 2011,
accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23smithsonian.html.
102
M. Greenwood, ‘Lawmakers Push For A National Museum for American Latinos’, Huffington Post, September 14, 2016, accessed on February 1, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/latino-american-museum-bill_us_57d96d82e4b0fbd4b7bca219.
103
E. Rothstein, ‘To Each His Own Museum, as Identity Goes on Display’, The New York Times, December 28, 2010, accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/arts/design/29identity.html.
23 ‘I don’t like to see us continuing to divide ourselves into groups. I just think it’s better to honor women’s achievements - and men’s achievements and all Americans’ achievements – in the American history museum.’104
Penny Nance of the conservative group Concerned Women for America (CWA) also spoke out against the museum, because ‘there are already 19 Smithsonian museums and galleries in Washington, D.C. that could showcase the role of women in history.’105
The crucial word in this sentence is ‘could’. Indeed they could – to paraphrase the message of Karen Nickless and Heather Huyck’s article mentioned in the previous chapter, every museum collection is filled with women’s history stories, if only one is willing to search for them. In reality, however, museums often fail to do so. For this reason, in 1996 a nonprofit organization called the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) decided it was time for action. In the twenty years of its existence, the National Women’s History Museum has continuously campaigned for a permanent institution in the nation’s capital as part of the Smithsonian Institution. NWHM CEO Joan Wages believes that a national women’s history museum deserves a place between the other identity museums, as it would serve to ‘educate all Americans about the critical and indispensable role women have played in our history.’106
Because the Smithsonian Institution is funded with federal money, legislation concerning the creation of new museums must be approved by Congress. Until 2014, all of the NWHM’s proposed bills stranded in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. There was a lot of discussion about practical issues, such as whether the museum should be located on the Mall or at another location in the city, whether it should be part of the Smithsonian Institution and whether the museum would be privately or federally funded.107 Additionally, and maybe even most importantly, questions were raised about which stories and themes should be represented in the museum. In December 2014, Congress at last approved of legislation for a Congressional Commission to study and produce a plan for the
104 D. Shesgreen, ‘Hartzler: Women don’t need their own history museum,’ USATODAY, May 10, 2014,
accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/08/hartzler-women-need-history-museum/8881269/.
105 P. Nance, ‘Honor the True Legacy of All Women’, US News, May 13, 2014, accessed February 1, 2017,
http://concernedwomen.org/honor-the-true-legacy-of-all-women/.
106 J. Wages, ‘Making the Case for a National Women’s History Museum’, Huffington Post, November 24, 2014,
accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-wages/making-the-case-for-a-nat_b_6201322.html.
107 ‘NCH Proposes Changes to National Women’s History Museum Commission Bill’, The National Coalition
for History, May 20, 2014, accessed February 1, 2017, http://historycoalition.org/2014/05/20/nch-proposes-changes-to-national-womens-history-museum-commission-bill/.
24 creation of a women’s history museum in Washington, D.C.108
This Commission has produced a report, which was presented to the President and Congress on Wednesday
November 16th 2016, answering all of the before-mentioned questions. The most pertinent and central question the Commission was asked to address was whether the country needs a museum of this nature in the nation’s capital. The answer was affirmative: ‘It is time.’109
3.2. Criticism from various sides
Before going further into the details of the Commission’s report, it is interesting to take a look at the practices of the organization behind the efforts for a women’s history museum over the past twenty years, the NWHM. While most historians were positive about the NWHM’s objective, academic historians specifically have been very critical of the course of events within the organization. They disagreed with the NWHM over matters such as the museum’s mission statement, its representation of women’s history and the way it dealt with potentially controversial topics, and the lack of effort to make use of the expertise from the academic community. This troublesome relationship has been a big disadvantage for the NWHM. As Edith Mayo already argued in ‘Putting Women in their Place: Methods and Sources for Including Women’s History in Museums and Historic Sites’ (2003), one of the most powerful tools for integrating women’s history in public history would be a community of women scholars – not only of public historians, but a cooperation between them and academic scholars who could support museum professionals in several ways.
‘Academic scholars should view public history venues as conduits to the public for their historical scholarship, garnering a wide public audience for their research. Academic women might also play a powerful and effective role in encouraging museum and historic site administrators to support women’s scholarship by making available research time, publication possibilities, adequate and monetary support, and defense of possible controversial issues.’110
108 ‘Congress votes to create congressional commission to study creation of National Women’s History Museum,
National Women’s History Museum, December 12, 2014, accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.nwhm.org/blog/congress-votes-to-create-congressional-commission/.
109 ‘Executive Summary’, The American Museum of Women’s History: Congressional Commission Report to
the President of the United States and Congress’, November 16, 2016, accessed February 1, 2017, http://amwh.us, p. 8.
25 To understand the difficult relationship between the National Women’s History Museum and women’s historians, it is important to assess the organization’s CEO and President, Joan Wages. Wages is a former lobbyist with degrees in mathematics and philosophy – not exactly the kind of academic credentials a museum president might be expected to have.111 In the Huffington Post, Wages and the NWHM have been contrasted to the Smithsonian’s African American History Museum, which ‘boasted an eminent Scholarly Advisory Committee from the start’ and whose current president, Lonnie Bunch, is a Ph.D. historian with decades of museum experience.112 In contrast, Joan Wages is said to have ‘cheerfully denied having any professional knowledge of women’s history’.113
In the HuffPost article, several renowned women’s historians such as Ellen DuBois and Heather Huyck comment on the lack of effort from the NWHM’s leadership to reach out to the women’s history community. DuBois, involved with the NWHM in 1998, even states that the ‘leadership was not very interested in what the historians had to say’.114
A women’s historian who has also openly expressed her dissatisfaction with the course of events within the museum is Sonya Michel, Professor Emerita of History, Women’s
Studies and American Studies. Michel is a former member of the NWHM’s Scholarly
Advisory Council – a group of eighteen women’s historians appointed by the NWHM in 2011 to help develop a vision for the future museum.115 In 2014, the year Congress approved of legislation for the museum, CEO Joan Wages suddenly informed the scholars she would be dissolving the advisory council. In response, Michel wrote an article called ‘The National Women’s History Museum apparently doesn’t care much for women’s historians’ (2014).116 In the article she argued that the majority of the historians on the advisory council wanted a greater engagement with the museum and that they felt that their input was mostly neglected by the organization. In general, the historians of the advisory council noticed a pressing lack of an ‘institutionalized relationship with the affiliated scholars.’ In fact, according to Michel the scholars were actually about to resign from their duty because of their disagreement with the organization, had Joan Wages not – intentionally or unintentionally – beaten them to it.117 After publishing her article, Michel also contacted the American Historical
111 A. Stone and C. Wilkie, ‘National Women’s History Museum Makes Little Progress After 16 Years’,
Huffington Post, April 8, 2012, accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/08/national-womens-history-museum_n_1408662.html.
112 Idem. 113
Michel, ‘The National Women’s History Museum Apparently Doesn’t Care Much for Women’s Historians’.
114 Stone and Wilkie, ‘National Women’s History Museum Makes Little Progress After 16 Years’.
115 Michel, ‘The National Women’s History Museum Apparently Doesn’t Care Much for Women’s Historians’. 116
Idem.
