10:30:02 Okay ready.
10:30:14 Good morning everyone.
10:30:26 We're just going to wait a couple of seconds for a few folks for folks to hop on.
10:30:53 It's pretty exciting to see this many people interested in suffrage.
10:30:59 At 1030, in the morning.
10:31:22 Yes, Carolyn boats for women,
10:31:33 waiting for a few folks to hop on if y'all wouldn't mind.
10:31:37 For those who are participating in the chat box, introducing yourselves. We always love learning where people are coming from. and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and perspectives.
10:31:50 As we continue this session.
10:32:08 Right. Since it is 1032.
10:32:12 We're going to get started.
10:32:16 Again, good morning and welcome to session 16 challenging women's suffrage narrative.
10:32:24 And it's actually going to start with three short presentations by our panelists and then a moderated discussion will follow. And we ask that you sort of please wait to share your questions until after the panelists have done their short presentations
10:32:40 we look forward to having you all participate in this robust discussion during the second half of this session.
10:32:48 So, we will be utilizing a live transcript for the session for accessibility purposes. If you would like to hide the subtitles, because they may be distracting, simply click the live transcription button at the bottom of your application, and then select
10:33:05 hide subtitle.
10:33:06 And if your zoom application is not maximized. You may need to click on the three dots, more to the more icon to turn off the subtitles.
10:33:18 Now please use the q amp a function to pose questions to the panel. I will relay these questions to the panelists to close out this session.
10:33:27 And with that I am so incredibly excited to introduce our panelists this afternoon. Amanda Burton who is a curator at the brand new wine river Museum of Art, Fernanda grown archivist and head exhibitions program at Rutgers University, and Rachel Doberman
10:33:43 who is the digital humanist at the messenger library on the history of women and America, and I'm Ashley Koren she her pronouns and I am the Women's History content and interpretation curator for the National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian American
10:34:00 women's history initiative sorry, that's a big mouthful.
10:34:05 And before we jump in just a simple plug for those who are participating in marriage, you know, please remember to visit their pre recorded poster sessions on the YouTube link that I will be placing in the chat box in a few moments.
10:34:22 And with that, I'm actually going to ask, Amanda to start us off.
10:34:26 Absolutely. Thanks, I'll just get to sharing my screen, and we shall go right into it.
10:34:33 Right.
10:34:35 Ashley Can you give me a thumbs up. Can we see that.
10:34:38 Excellent. Well, thank you for the invitation to speak and for organizing this panel. I really look forward to the discussion to follow.
10:34:47 So for more than five years I've worked on the idea of creating an exhibition to commemorate the centennial of the 19th amendment and the suffrage movement.
10:34:55 It was a challenging sell to an art museum or Museum of American Art. In the end, my approach was to focus on the visual aspects of the movement and an exhibition entitled votes for women, a visual history.
10:35:10 Unlike most of our other exhibitions votes for women did not focus on an individual artist or period of art history. In fact, it included very few paintings at all.
10:35:21 Instead we used a great deal of material culture drawn from archival collections. So entering the exhibition you saw capes and banners borrowed from the National Women's party against the backdrop of film clip showing suffragist in the action posters
10:35:36 postcards and political cartoons filled the gallery.
10:35:40 Traditionally the brandy wine has a special focus on the history of illustration, and that's where the exhibition concept first began the visual language have suffered just so rich, however, that the exhibition grew from there to encompass the personal
10:35:55 performative promotional and perceived visual messaging of the movement tradition. The final exhibition was a combination of ephemera photographs costumes original artwork, all combined in an effort to recreate the visual experience of the suffrage movement.
10:36:14 Each object was examined and analyzed with regard to how its particular form, help to unify the cause through visual impact, what we call the spectacle of suffrage.
10:36:27 In a section of the exhibition that called into question the absence of images of black suffragist in mainstream history. We chose to focus on visual representations of organized black women of the period, including the National Women's Baptist Convention
10:36:41 led by nanny Burrows, and the class photo of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority members of Howard University who marched in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington.
10:36:53 It was rare that mainstream visual culture dealt with the combination of race and suffrage beyond some overtly racist figurines and films.
10:37:02 The two cartoon, these two cartoons in the exhibition encapsulate visually some of the racial issues circulating around very specific events on the left Boardman Robinson's cartoon appeared in The New York Tribune just days before the celebrated suffrage
10:37:16 march in Washington DC.
10:37:19 On the right, a cartoon originally appearing and a Tennessee newspaper in the weeks following the state's ratification of the 19th amendment draws attention to the small but mighty influence of black women voters who frightened sign and simultaneously
10:37:33 emasculate Southern anti suffragists.
10:37:37 One of the underlying narratives of our suffrage exhibition related to the need to look to untapped resources to understand as well as possible. The historical situation of black suffragists.
10:37:49 One of the most important sources I used was the crisis magazine fully digitized and available online in them I could read and absorb the visual presentation of the black suffrage story, particularly into issues dedicated to the topic, the covers of both
10:38:05 suffered issues overtly connected the struggle for women's suffrage to that of the abolition movement, putting into service historically significant figures, excited to know more about the August 1915 cover image and understand the strategy of its use,
10:38:22 I tracked down the cover artist Lottie Wilson, many twists and turns later I located Wilson's original painting not in an art museum, but in the public library in the town of in the town in which she lived in Niles Michigan.
10:38:37 It had been gifted to Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 and hung in the White House, and it was in turn gifted to retiring member of the White House staff who had served as a private bodyguard to Abraham Lincoln.
10:38:51 Wilson was a devoted suffragist and a portrait painter, the first black art student at the Art Institute of Chicago. Well inside the crisis thought leaders in the black community voice their opinions as to why women should have the vote.
10:39:05 Wilson made her case with a visual argument.
10:39:09 Wilson story was a unique connection back to the role of the artist in the suffrage movement that was highlighted throughout the exhibition, but like so many other suffragists of color, if their stories were told they were often told in the absence of
10:39:23 visual imagery. So as a way of helping to alleviate the illusion of imagery of featuring black indigenous and other people of color, we again connected back to the roots of the exhibition and commission five women illustrators to help us add portraits
10:39:37 to our exhibition.
10:39:39 We did so in the form of a mural entitled The Hidden Figures of the suffrage movement, which featured, which, which featured the radical accomplishments of 14 black to Connor Asian Pacific Islander and immigrant women in pursuit of suffrage, including
10:39:55 right there in the center Lottie Wilson.
10:39:59 So working with the contemporary artists, especially those known for their illustration work re emphasize the importance of visual culture and making persuasive arguments and essence I felt as if we are not only demonstrating how visual culture influenced
10:40:15 audiences engaged in suffrage debates 100 years ago, but also how very vital artists and their visual messaging are in changing the narrative today. Thank you.
10:40:35 Thank you, Amanda for that wonderful presentation I'm really excited to dive into it later on Fernanda.
10:40:40 Would you mind going next.
10:40:44 Of course, share my screen.
10:40:56 Can everyone see.
10:41:00 Thank you, Ashley and I'd especially like to thank Liz Navarro who organized this session, back when it was supposed to be in not Harrisonburg.
10:41:09 And I'm glad so glad that we were able to do it after all.
10:41:14 So in celebration of the centennial of the passage of 19th amendment.
10:41:18 We plan to major exhibition and public program at Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives for fall 2020.
10:41:26 The goal of the exhibit was to understand the women's suffrage movement on the ground in a particular local area Middlesex County New Jersey. Well, placing it in the context of the suffrage movement in New Jersey, and in the United States as a whole.
10:41:41 Of course the covered pandemic offended our plans, causing the exhibition to be translated into a digital exhibit using the Omega platform.
10:41:50 I was able to repurpose images and create captions and metadata, based on the exhibit catalog that I had already completed at this point.
10:41:59 And I found additional images to make the exhibit more visually engaging and added introductory text for each section to tie it together.
10:42:07 I, the credit for designing the exhibit.
10:42:10 However, it goes to my colleague Tara Mahajan who master the Emeka software and I don't know if tower is on the call but if there are questions about Emeka, she would be the person to answer them.
10:42:25 So, New Jersey is unique in that some women, and a few African Americans actually voted in the early 19th century.
10:42:35 The seventh teen 617 76 state constitution gave the right to vote to quote, inhabitants of this colony of full age who are worth 50 pounds proclamation money and have resided in the county for 12 months preceding the election.
10:42:53 As many as 10,000 women may have voted in New Jersey, up to 1807, including some African American women characters at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia found nine poll lists, including 163 women's names, although none from Middlesex
10:43:11 County.
10:43:13 The rise of political parties, however, let's allegations that women's votes were being manipulated by rival parties, ultimately leading to the passage of electoral reform legislation that limited the franchise to free white male citizens.
10:43:39 New Jersey, however, use this history to claim that they were restoring women's right to vote. To make the exhibit more personally engaging for the audience. I inserted profiles of local women leaders throughout the narrative.
10:43:48 for instance Hester Martha pool.
10:43:53 You find her.
10:43:55 There she is,
10:43:57 who live from 1853 to 1932 from the touch in New Jersey, was a poet artists world traveler feminist and journalist for suffrage activism was rooted in her commitment to the temperance movement.
10:44:14 For example, She was the author of fruits and how to use them, published in 1891, which focused on alcohol free cooking in the 1890s she served as an officer of the New Jersey Women's Suffrage Association, representing the membership committee.
10:44:30 And I will just demonstrate how America works by showing the metadata for history's portrait.
10:44:37 So this is a portrait is actually from backtrack studios. And you can see the metadata at the bottom.
10:45:00 Okay.
10:45:01 Well individual Middlesex County women were active in the suffrage movement during the 19th century suffrage organizing at the local level ramped up considerably beginning and about 1912.
10:45:13 In that year.
10:45:15 The New Brunswick political study club was founded soon followed by other local clubs.
10:45:22 I found the Constitution of the New Brunswick political study club in the papers of the Atkinson family.
10:45:34 I think I'm in the wrong section of the exhibit. Sorry about that.
10:45:40 So here's the Constitution.
10:45:44 I found it in the papers of the Atkinson family which was a local family whose daughters were active in the suffrage movement.
10:45:57 Also, in New Brunswick at least the editor of the local paper was sympathetic to women's suffrage, even allowing the women to edit a special suffrage themed issue of the newspaper, which is lovely woman's idea of a newspaper.
10:46:14 And this newspaper was digitized by the New Brunswick Public Library.
10:46:27 Finally, I wanted to show the important role that African American women played in the suffrage movement in Middlesex County and beyond,
10:46:39 like white women, many African American women were drawn into political activism through the temperance movement in 1915, African American women brought together church missionary societies, civic literary business and temperance clubs together to form
10:46:56 the New Jersey State federation of colored women's clubs in 1917, seeing that African American formed an important power.
10:47:06 Power block Lillian fighter.
10:47:22 And I found a letter, where she explains to co workers. The process of bringing in the colored women whom she described as, quote, most intelligent thoughtful and worthwhile and then
10:47:38 well African American women voted in New Jersey after 1920 Native Americans did not receive the right of citizenship and the right to vote until 1924 and Asian Americans, not until 1952.
10:47:53 Women struggle for the right to vote in the early 20th century inspires us today as we respond to new challenges to enfranchisement.
10:48:02 Thank you.
10:48:07 Thank you for an end I always love learning more about women.
10:48:14 Women story so thank you so much. And now for something a little different. Rachel, can you.
10:48:21 Sure. Hi, I'm Rachel and the digital humanist at the messenger library on the history of women in America and our exhibit our project is a little bit different.
10:48:35 I'll share my screen with you while I'm sort of giving you a little bit of the background.
10:48:47 Now it's not letting me after our practice that worked so well. who can share.
10:48:53 Only host all panelists, not letting me do it.
10:48:56 There we go.
10:48:58 Sorry about that. Okay, here we go.
10:49:02 Um, so, I am the digital humanist for something called the long 19th amendment project which is a project at Central Library to
10:49:18 advance the scholarship on not just the immediate history of women's suffrage and the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 but sort of a broader history of gender and voting rights in America.
10:49:34 And I think the impetus behind the project was, you know, to really thinking that our collections of messenger have been at the heart of suffrage historiography from the beginning the center library was founded in 1943 with a gift of papers by from mod
10:49:52 would park who was an alumna and a suffragist and who gathered up her friends papers also suffragists and donated them to Radcliffe college, those papers were microphones in the 70s they were digitized by pro quest in the 90s and they are at the center
10:50:08 of suffrage historiography, but they're also an overwhelmingly white, and sort of elite Northeast Corridor vision or view of the suffrage movement and so we really wanted to, sort of, you know, continue in our role, sort of, in suffrage, promoting suffered
10:50:32 scholarship by trying to expand help expand that story and make more kinds of materials available and bring together scholars who were thinking about and working on these issues in different ways.
10:50:43 So that's sort of the impetus for the whole project that our exhibit is a part of and it included faculty fellowships and a conference and summer workshops and fellowships with high school teachers and more faculty so it really, you know, and this portal
10:51:02 which is my real sort of project, and I'm happy to share more about it.
10:51:08 But a crucial part of the, of the project was supposed to be to gallery exhibits and self injure life library just underwent a massive renovation we have a beautiful new gallery, it has had exactly one exhibit in it there Angela Davis exhibit, which went
10:51:32 up the fall before coven fall 2019. And so our first of two suffrage exhibits was supposed long 19th amendment project exhibits was supposed to be the next thing to go into the gallery.
10:51:43 And we were literally starting to install it, the week that coven happened.
10:51:49 So our exhibit never went up and it transformed into a digital digital exhibit instead which is but I'll show you a little bit of so this is the portal website where our exhibit now lives.
10:52:03 And it has many other kinds of projects the centerpiece of this is actually an archival collections database, but here is seeing citizens are exhibit.
10:52:17 And this exhibit was curated by historian Allison Lang, and it really follows her to the argument of her book, which is about the visual
10:52:31 culture, behind the both suffrage and anti suffrage movements.
10:52:37 And one of the things that Allison was really attentive to is the ways in which sort of, there were connections between suffrage and abolition, and the ways also the anti suffragist used to the specter of black voting as a way of trying to deter white
10:52:58 men from supporting suffrage separate rights.
10:53:03 So, um, what we essentially did to create this exhibit I'll click through a few of the sections, but what we essentially did was take the already completely formed ready to go, literally, like sitting in the gallery on the floor waiting to on the walls
10:53:22 text and images and try to translate them into a digital platform and it's a brand new digital platform because this, we're building inside the portal which is a piece of custom software.
10:53:33 So not WordPress not a mecca, but just a piece of custom software that we had been developing for our larger digital project.
10:53:40 And I'm happy to talk more about that I think there are some challenges that you'll see the this exhibit is a little bit clunky.
10:53:47 And I think that's for two main reasons. One is that it literally was picking up.
10:53:57 I, you know, art arts and artifacts and documents and texts that had been so carefully chosen to work in a physical gallery space, and then trying to kind of shoe horn them into a digital platform after everything had already been finalized and approved
10:54:13 so I couldn't go back in and choose more pictures I couldn't go back in and write more texts or change the text. The way that some other folks, you know, did when they sort of had to make this shift.
10:54:23 And so it really was kind of shoehorning this physical gallery exhibit into this brand new baby digital platform.
10:54:31 But you can see we have there several sections and then each one.
10:54:40 There's images and and texts and some of these a lot of these images come from our collections of messenger but some we also sourced from other libraries, museums around the country.
10:55:03 Also from other Harvard museums. There's a whole section here about the again the relationship between suffrage and abolition and the way that the imagery of those two movements, very intentionally and self consciously kind of played off of each other.
10:55:18 We spent a lot of time with.
10:55:22 Where's this are the one that I want to show you.
10:55:26 One of the things that's a major feature of our collection it's messengers we have a lot of suffrage ephemera. In particular, we have a lot of suffrage pins like broaches, and we have a lot of suffrage posters and postcards.
10:55:48 And so we really wanted those to be
10:55:44 featured in the collection in the, in the exhibit and in the gallery version, these were meant to have a huge display of Postcards in a big case in the middle of the room.
10:55:55 So that got translated here and when you click on any one of these you can get the full sized image when there's anything to see on the back we also reproduce the back.
10:56:04 And we had to do sort of a lot of last minute scramble digitization to get digital images of the materials that were meant to go in this gallery exhibit.
10:56:19 And, yeah, so it's, I would say I think there's the process I was part of the committee that created the original gallery exhibit as well and I think the process that we went through to build that exhibit with an eye towards the gallery space and that,
10:56:34 you know, real kind of experience of being in the in the space with these materials, was so
10:56:44 careful and really thoughtful and rich and then we sort of, because this happened literally as the exhibit was going up and we didn't have a lot of time to make a transition or a plan.
10:56:54 I think we sort of imperfectly made this transition.
10:56:59 My hope is that, you know, we have a second exhibit that's going up as part of the as part of our project, which is was supposed to go up this past fall and it was now delayed it'll go up.
10:57:12 I think next September.
10:57:14 That one's called electability it's about women running for political office so it's sort of about what happens after the 19th amendment right.
10:57:22 And you know that one. I think that one will also be, we hope it will be a physical exhibit in the gallery, and, but unlike seeing citizens we've now sort of pivoted to plan that one to be both a full fledged digital exhibit from the get go.
10:57:37 And the physical gallery exhibit and so we're, you know, in the planning process I'm happy to sort of talk about how that differs right to be in a process that is intentionally trying to make both kinds of exhibits in tandem versus one that's really focused
10:57:52 on trying to do one thing and then sort of scrambling to pivot at the last second.
10:58:01 That is senior citizens and I'm happy to say more about the exhibit the other exhibit, or the whole project and sort of how it fits in because I think that's really the ultimately what we've had to present that to people and coven times it seems citizens
10:58:12 as a part of it but it's now become sort of really part of this larger portal package in a way that I think people coming to view the exhibit in the gallery would not have experienced that connection quite so intimately.
10:58:27 Thank you, Rachel, we're going to move on to a moderated discussion with a sort of two things that I that I've noticed when looking when being a part of these presentations that you know I'd love for us to, to be thinking about throughout this entire
10:58:43 conversation, and the two ideas were sort of this idea of, you know, one of the ways that we that people can continue and have challenged, you know, typical historical and and suffrage narratives, is you know to create different entryway points right
10:58:59 to this history and so I think that's really fascinating that the three of you have been able to really use objects to create different entry points right and thinking about those entry points, whether they be physical or digital, or even thinking about
10:59:15 sort of the conversations that you all are participating and I think that it's really crucial to sort of create that kind of context and. And another thing, you know, which is super important right is really trying not to situate suffered as a moment
10:59:30 in time, right and do the three of you have done pretty successfully right this idea that, you know, separate is a part of a long standing complex multi layered conversation or dialogue about like civil discourse and the history of just people in general
10:59:48 right like I think really situated separate not as something that is separate but something that is a part of our connected to not just different movements, but two different thinking about just democracy in general, right I think can be a really sort
11:00:02 of great way to challenge this idea of separate right how suffrage itself is sort of a microcosm for the history of democracy thinking about the history of democracy.
11:00:15 Right.
11:00:15 And so with that I wanted to move to our first question, which is, you know, one of the things that I've noticed in the last year is that you know I haven't seen too much about people actually publicly grieving the loss rate of these exhibitions and programs
11:00:35 and everything in between right it's sort of you sort of been pushed to just pivot immediately, and there hasn't really sort of been this sort of public.
11:00:43 I know there's been private people agreed to private but I don't think that there's been enough public discourse and sort of how do we come to terms or reconcile with sort of what has happened within our jobs.
11:00:56 So with the three of you you know how have each of you come to terms with the products and programs that were either delayed or cancelled or reimagined due to code it and Amanda Would you mind starting us off.
11:01:08 Yeah, that's no problem.
11:01:10 So, unlike Rachel's project we actually did physically open our exhibition on February 1 2020, but then soon after had to close and do the big pivot as you say.
11:01:23 And so we were hoping for 40 to 50,000 visitors for the show and we got 13,000 visitors. And it, you know, I did a lot of the private grieving, that's for sure.
11:01:36 You know, but I found that part of my responsibility was, was to still thank everybody that was involved like the lenders and tell them you know this, this wasn't what we had hoped to be hoped it to be but here's how we're here's how we're coping.
11:01:54 And so one of the ways that we coped like the other projects was to turn it into a digital platform as well. And so the positive of that you know see the positive the silver lining.
11:02:05 Is it last forever now these videos that I made in the galleries, looking and thinking in the moment about it, are there. Now, still, I mean when the show would have closed, you know, in June of 2020.
11:02:21 So that's, and I think we've done a lot of that not just with our suffrage projects but all sorts of work based projects where you say, Oh, you know, like with the, the photographs the rather the postcards that Rachel showed, I got to put up a big display
11:02:34 of postcards and I was like, I'm a little disappointed that they're also small and, and you can't really see them but I'm like, but look, when we do it this way LIKE Rachel's done, they're huge they're big you can get into them.
11:02:47 So seeing the positive aspects, is one of the only things that I've been able to grasp on to, to say, you know, it would have been nice to do it the way we had planned, but this way is good to Fernanda.
11:03:07 Well, I was in a way I was lucky because our exhibit was planned for fall 2020. So, there was plenty of time to where I realized, gradually realized that the physical exhibit was not going to happen.
11:03:26 And I had time to prepare the digital exhibit.
11:03:32 Also, I had, I was a bit concerned because you know I was doing a very local exhibit and I hadn't found a lot of three dimensional objects for this exhibit so I was worried about that.
11:03:48 And so of course.
11:03:51 As it turned out, it didn't really matter.
11:03:53 When I had to do the digital exhibit.
11:03:57 And our program, our opening program, we had as a lecture, you know as a webinar so we were still able to to do the program.
11:04:11 So, um, you know, I think I was really okay about it.
11:04:17 And, you know, Rachel I have a question for you since your work is situated in a digital context, right, thinking about this particular question about how you, you know, coming to terms right where your work is going to be different, but I wanted to ask
11:04:29 you, you know what, you know, did you have to come to terms with this but in terms of, even your work being digital not being able to actually engage with the object yourself right like not being able to see them because it's one thing, like, engaging
11:04:44 in any kind of physical object is different online than it is then you seeing it in person and sometimes it actually helps to be able to see the object in person before you presented online.
11:04:55 So, you know, with this pivot did that affect your work at all. That's a, that's an interesting question. Yeah, I mean I was gonna say you my situation is a little, a little different because the bulk of my work was always this digital project and part
11:05:09 of what happened for me with coven is that suddenly the digital project took on much larger significance in the overall long 19th amendment project right because suddenly everything had to be digital and so our work became a much bigger component of the
11:05:24 overall whole and then also right things moved into the portal that may be we're going to be or weren't going to be there in quite such a robust way like the exhibit always was going to have some kind of a digital presence but it wasn't intended to be
11:05:37 a full fledged digital exhibit and we've never done something like that before. And we're we're actually in kind of a transitional moment where you know previously we had essentially a small display area in our lobby.
11:05:54 And we would have these very small exhibits that were these very I mean really cool and amazingly researched exhibits of materials from our collections put together by our librarians and archivists which were really wonderful and you would see them when
11:06:08 you came in, you know, to the library and already with the renovation we were pivoting towards having like a real full fledged gallery space and bringing in guest curators, and it was just a very different, different kind of process and we're not an art
11:06:25 museum right we're an archive and so like our guest curators are history professors who may or may not have a lot of exhibit experience going in a minute but it's an interesting kind of a place and we were sort of at this moment of flux anyhow because
11:06:48 of those transitions when we threw Covidien on top, I think, to your more specific question for me. You know, so I'm here with my digital humanities hat on, but I'm a historian.
11:06:55 First and foremost, and I work in a library but my job is digital and I don't get to spend time in the archives really, and with materials so part of what I was excited about about being on the exhibit committee and getting to participate in this exhibit
11:07:06 was actually maybe getting a chance to be with, with the stuff, which is not mostly part of my job. So that was disappointing to have that.
11:07:18 That part kind of torn away, but I think that the part that was most challenging. Really for us was and partly as I said that you know we were doing this in this brand new platform so like I could hardly tell you what we needed or how it works because
11:07:33 this was literally the first thing I built in the brand new platform and part of what happened for us also is that we had to shift our development priorities.
11:07:46 So we've been emphasizing getting other parts of the portal site ready first especially the collection, the archival collections and the database, and we had to pivot to priority prioritizing the parts of the technical infrastructure that could accommodate
11:07:55 the exhibit. And so that was a big, a big transition for us.
11:07:59 But then the other piece of it was just sort of being handed.
11:08:05 All of these materials for a gallery exhibit and not really being able to alter them very much but having to figure out how to put them into this platform that they weren't created for that was and you know without being able to get my hands on them without
11:08:17 being able to choose something different and so that was it was a little bit of that I think was the trickiest trickiest part of this exhibit and something I think we've learned from for the, for the next one but truly we were literally in the process
11:08:31 of putting fate like the decal was about to go on the wall with the insurance, And then the library closed.
11:08:41 Thank you all for your responses you know and i this, some of the responses actually helped me that affects my next question, which is, you know, I work in a museum with tons of objects and, you know, one of the things that has been most interesting is,
11:08:55 you know, how are people going to respond when they can't physically be next to something right How are our audiences going to be able to engage will they be less inclined to participate in our programs because they can't physically be in the museum.
11:09:10 Right. And so I think those are sort of the fears or one of the many years, when we pivoted to remote work was you know with our audience has come with us but we've learned so much about our audiences and one we've expanded our audiences because we've
11:09:24 digital right I programs are people from hungry and believes and all over the world can now, engage in our objects next question is, you know, has this shift in the last year, change the way that you all perceive and engaged with their audiences and Fernando
11:09:41 I'd love for you to start us off on this one.
11:09:45 Sure. Um.
11:09:47 Well, one thing I realized with an online exhibit is that you have to be proactive, or no one will find your exhibit.
11:09:55 So I did things like I presented it as, as a poster, at a conference, you know, which I wouldn't otherwise have done.
11:10:03 And then, my colleague at our margin promoted it through social media.
11:10:09 And I found myself sending numerous people the link.
11:10:14 But as you said there was an advantage in that.
11:10:20 I realized I could share it more widely with, with more people. Yeah. And the same with the program we had, you know, a really good attendance at our at our opening program.
11:10:33 People from all over.
11:10:36 But it was really a change because normally we try to engage a local audience trying to get people to come to the gallery. But this, you know, in a way, your audience becomes much bigger your potential audience becomes much bigger but you have to work
11:10:52 a little bit to reach them, and Amanda Did you have this sort of similar experience where, like, Fernanda where you kind of had to take on more of the marketing role and sort of figuring out you know how do I get this to our audiences or did you have
11:11:08 a sort of different experience. Well, um, I guess, definitely have net never created as much social media content as I did last year with this show I mean, I remember everything was closing on Saturday.
11:11:24 On Wednesday, I went to the gallery with the PR department, and I filmed for two hours of me in front of the gout and some of the objects thinking. All right, we're going to be closed for two weeks we're going to need some social media posts, and we ended
11:11:36 up stretching that out into 18 different posts that went out over the next six months. So I had to have to think our social media director for thinking of those things.
11:11:48 But, you know, it caused me to think as much as I love to travel and and meet people face to face right right before this happened I had been been invited out to University of Kansas to give a lecture on the exhibition, and that was fantastic and I got
11:12:03 to travel and meet new people and go to the university and see their collections.
11:12:07 But you know, it was not a big audience I'm going to tell you and then I realized it was all that expense carbon footprint time, energy, all that to talk to, you know, 30 people in Kansas, and here I am sitting in you know my home office and I can reach
11:12:25 people in lots of different countries so I have to wrap my head around that, that, that new way of doing things that that being invited to the prestigious wherever you know where you get there and there's an audience of 10 people.
11:12:40 Isn't isn't the standard anymore and, and our suffrage programs. I mean it was a good thing we're all learning all the time right but suddenly we had to learn.
11:12:50 Zoom webinar because we had hit the limit for regular meetings and then we had to learn the next level up and then we had to buy a new license because we had 200 people, like we never have 200 people in the real world.
11:13:03 So, one of those silver linings again.
11:13:06 And and Rachel, you know, like I said you know like you talked about your work with slightly different but you know have you learned anything new about sort of your libraries audience.
11:13:18 We have, um, you know it's this messenger is a really wonderful and kind of unique place in general but also I think at Harvard and that we're you know we're an open access library you don't need a Harvard ID or any particular credentials to get in you.
11:13:35 Will you don't just show up anymore. Now, you know, we, but we used to make an appointment. And now we are digitizing materials for researchers at a you know it's a huge part of the work of the library right now is to make sure that we're still getting
11:13:49 material to scholars all over.
11:13:53 And so, you know, the one hand, not to be able to have people come and be physically with the materials and not to be able to have them interact physically in the, you know, in our in the reading room or in the exhibit is kind of a tragedy and an arc
11:14:09 in an archive, but it also opened up our collections and are
11:14:20 all of the, you know, scholarship and in exciting work and I thinking that's been happening surrounding these materials to much bigger audiences because people are not having to come here we're serving a lot of stuff, stuff.
11:14:34 And once away I mean, just like one piece of sort of like covert pandemic pivoting serendipity.
11:14:41 Which is not about the exhibit per se but another piece of how we've sort of re imagined our audience. Our director Dan Kaminsky had this idea in like may just like maybe since we're having to cancel all of our public programming What if we do this like
11:14:55 virtual series and we'll call we called them suffrage school. And we invited scholars to come and choose one artifact or document from our collections and then to record it sort of two minute video, you know, explaining the document and provide a context
11:15:12 and close reading and then often questions for follow up and we would post them weekly more or less.
11:15:22 On the messenger website and also in the portal where they live forever. Now you can see the whole collection in the portal. And they were just wildly popular like 10s of thousands of views far beyond you know anybody who would come to a messenger program
11:15:42 normally which would have to meet their well attended events but their event you have to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, you have to you know get a ticket for our small space and.
11:15:47 And now we've got 10s of thousands of people watching these they're being used in classrooms and you know high school classrooms and college classrooms all over and we are getting fantastic feedback from that that's also happening with our suffered syllabus
11:16:00 that we created with a sort of crowdsource with a group of scholars from around the country.
11:16:07 And I think you know we're also getting by the same token viewers to our exhibit and I hope for the next exhibit as well who wouldn't have made the trip to Cambridge or if they did we're again we're not a museum I don't think you were on people's radar
11:16:20 to come to the messenger to take a look at the stuff in the you know what used to be our entry way it is now our beautiful.
11:16:27 Yeah.
11:16:29 So I do think we're getting a kind of we, you know, have access to a kind of audience that would not normally be just meandering in off the street into an hour, I have happening upon us.
11:16:40 Actually, if I could play off of that. Now, you have to rethink how you're reaching your audience but now you've got a different audience too so I always think you know the people who would come to the exhibit or come to an in person program had that
11:16:56 same feeling like me of like oh my god this is the actual object, this is the thing that was in front of the white house in 1917. I want to be in its presence.
11:17:04 Right.
11:17:05 But as Rachel was just saying this, you've got to find a way to communicate that excitement when you're no longer there. And granted, there was a small group of people who felt that way about me, about these objects, I think.
11:17:21 But you know, with presenting your own excitement, whether it's like the curators excitement of the scholars excitement. I mean, I think. See, maybe it's second hand but seeing how exciting and enthusiastic when I'm like this banner this exact banner
11:17:37 was hand stitched, and here it is in a photograph in front of the white, and here it is right now and look at what it's been through and, you know, trying to, instead of just putting them in front of the object and hoping they have that authentic experience
11:17:51 right walking them through this experience now is on the to do list for these digital programs. Yeah, and that's an excellent point Amanda right really thinking about the ways in which your audience can actually help extend the conversation right so your
11:18:08 audiences are not just spectators at this point like you're actually asking them to be a part of the dialogue and to challenge right what you have on on display to as well right like one of the great things about having these sort of public programs is
11:18:22 that you know you do have these, these, these.
11:18:25 I would I don't want our version was amateur scholars, but you have people who are really invested in this work, too, and it's great to sort of engage in that particular type of dialogue with them and these public programs can allow for that and really
11:18:38 interesting and really interesting ways.
11:18:42 And so I want to I know that you know this this this session is called challenging women's suffrage narratives and we're going to get to, you know, we're going to stick it to the man really soon but I have just like one more question about sort of the,
11:18:58 you know, the creation of these particular objects and Amanda Would you mind sending us off with this question or Were there any new processes or workflows that were acquired you know when you sort of had to pivot to this sort of new sort of new normal,
11:19:15 I guess.
11:19:16 Well, as I mentioned before, I now refer to social content, social media as the the monster that needs to be fed. Right. And once you actually, I mean, I barely had an Instagram account to begin to start this out but you know once you realize that instead
11:19:33 of as a curator, putting it up the doing all the work ahead of time writing all the writing, doing all the planning putting it up there training the guides and then crossing your fingers for three months while people hopefully get what you're saying.
11:19:48 It changed into a king continuous care and feeding of, you know, doing a program or a thoughtful post or looking for a connection with the community group or, you know, it was, it was constant active process once the exhibition was up and and and it's
11:20:07 hard actually now to disengage from that because the exhibition is down. And, you know, I still want to do all the suffrage.
11:20:17 Yeah, and now as a curator I'm on to the next for exhibition so that was a definitely a difference, whereas it used to be. It's up, I'm down I'm on to the next thing.
11:20:27 This is, this is a continual process now. Yeah. Yeah. You're a Fernanda what new sort of process these are workflows Did you acquire through developing your digital exhibit.
11:20:39 Well, I had done some digital exhibits a few years ago, but the that platform was for various reasons, no longer available.
11:20:49 So we had actually just gotten permission from the administration to use a mecca.
11:20:55 And this was the first digital exhibit, or the first
11:21:03 products that we created using a mecca so that was,
11:21:09 you know, that was challenging, as I said I collaborated with with Tara margin who really designed and managed the exhibit mean I scan the images, wrote caption text and and created metadata.
11:21:30 So, And I expect that we will continue. I'm doing a mecca exhibits for in future.
11:21:44 So this was kind of this was the first one. So, you know, it turned out pretty well considering it's you know it's fairly simple exhibit as you can see, the other new thing was the program.
11:21:59 The webinar we recorded it.
11:22:03 And, you know, had to get all the requisite permissions, and then put it on YouTube.
11:22:11 The library's YouTube channel which we had never done that before. But I'm still surprised how many people have asked me for the link and I'm still sending people.
11:22:24 The link for the program. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
11:22:26 and and Rachel would you would you end and us off on this question.
11:22:43 Um, you know, again, because we were sort of already in this transitional moment with having a new gallery and this whole, how to how to do exhibits, in general, um, I don't know whether that made it harder or maybe made it better because we were already
11:22:48 sort of in in flux right so we were transitioning from the old style of sort of very document and you know material focused exhibits curated by our own Library and Archives staff to the sort of more conceptual historical narrative exhibits curated by
11:23:09 guest curators who are typically scholars and seems to this was was only the second one was supposed to be this the very the second one, so I think we were all sort of learning and developing a new process.
11:23:22 At that point for for creating exhibits, any anyhow.
11:23:27 So that's being sort of streamlined and sorted but I think that what I what I already see sort of that we're taking forward from the first long 19th amendment project exhibit to the second one that we're working on right now is kind of thinking about
11:23:45 the workflow and how to integrate the digital parts right that we're all, I don't think we'll ever do an exhibit again that's only. Yeah, that's only a physical exhibit or you know in the past my understanding is that there'd be a physical exhibit and
11:24:00 then the digital part of it would literally sort of be a catalog like here's the image caption here's the amateurs caption and, you know, not a full fledged exhibit in the way that these projects are.
11:24:11 So I can't imagine that we're ever going back to that model. I think this is here to stay.
11:24:16 And that does mean, you know, thinking differently about how you create the material that you have to think where the digital exhibits are their own entities and just like when you set out to, to design a gallery exhibit you have to think about right
11:24:27 well I have this many walls and they're this big but there are windows here and I can put the case here so what do we how do we use these different spaces and, you know, websites are like that too.
11:24:39 They have templates and styles, they have ways that they work them kinds of images that they, you know that fit better in different contexts they need more headings they need more texts honestly I think the digital exhibits are have a lot in common with
11:24:51 like photo essays, which is not necessarily true in in a gallery.
11:25:12 Somewhere I think in some respects the the objects and the images can speak for themselves a little bit more right but when you're scrolling down a website.
11:25:04 People really expect that the text that is next to an image is saying something directly about the image you can't just put like the introductory text on the wall and then have the whole rest of the wall, you know.
11:25:15 So I think we're all learning from from that and I can see that in this new exhibit we're working on.
11:25:21 You know I'm having more opportunity earlier in the process to sort of show like here is how the pages and the sections of a digital exhibit can be structured, just like you're thinking about meeting this many kinds of objects for these down gallery locations
11:25:34 I need this many landscape oriented pictures I need a feature image for each section and it needs to be this kind of image. I need a collage for here I would like to record a gallery tour with our curator they can be a video on the site and you know all
11:25:49 these components that are not that you know just so that that's like in the wasn't part of our workflow at all to consider that before, and to sort of get that in there, alongside the regular gallery exhibit planning i think is a pretty big shift.
11:26:02 Yeah.
11:26:04 So for those of you who are in the audience please feel free to drop some questions in the chat box.
11:26:12 But as you all are thinking of your amazing and insightful questions I do want to pose this next question to our panelists, and you know one of the things that I've been struggling with someone who you know whose job focuses on on women's history is this
11:26:27 idea of a hidden narrative or a hidden story right, are we talking about something that is actually hidden, are we talking about people who are hidden in plain sight, right, are we talking about something that is actually like something that no one in
11:26:40 the history of the universe has ever seen before has not discovered are we talking about things that have been purposefully erased or ignored or tempered right and so my next question to all of you is, you know, do you believe that your project has disrupted
11:26:58 existing narratives on women's suffrage and if No. Why not. So Rachel, would you mind, starting us off. Sure. And if it's okay I'm going to talk, maybe more broadly about the project and not just the exhibit, because the exhibit does a lot of work that
11:27:16 I think is really valuable and important about the connections between suffrage and abolition and the way that both black folks worked within and without the suffrage movement for voting rights but also the ways that sort of the specter of black voting
11:27:38 is deployed, and I think that you know was really powerful and pull together things in ways that maybe.
11:27:45 Many of us have not considered or thought of before in these relationships but the big place where I see this happening for us in our.
11:27:56 The, our teaching materials and in our collections right so we really try especially in the collections.
11:28:03 The centerpiece of the portal is a multi repository digital archival database and the idea is to be able to find to help help people be able to search for materials on the history of gender and voting rights in America.
11:28:17 In repositories across the country through this sort of single destination.
11:28:21 And one of the things that's been a real struggle that we've really thought and worked hard on and I think also is true and thinking about how to curate, an exhibit like this, is that you know material either.
11:28:38 We've had the experience that material, and this I think is true, especially for material and black women and voting rights is maybe not. It's often in archives, but they'll be
11:28:51 there it's often not digitized it's often in archives that for all of the obvious systemic reasons or maybe under resourced and can't do those kinds of new can't be as searchable and discovering and easy to discover for folks who aren't there.
11:29:24 suffragists let's say, and that's a different problem because queer suffragists, you know, often it's any number of these white lady suffragists whose materials we have they're easy to find, but they're not identified in any way as queer is not subject
11:29:38 headings and it's not in the catalog mechanism in the finding aid, how are you going to find out unless you already know and how we've done it right. So, those are two different kinds of visibility problems that we've been grappling with and that's been
11:29:50 true in all of our work from the teaching to the collections to the exhibits.
11:29:56 And that's a soapbox I could stand for a long time a lot more to say but but this is really like the main thing that I think about in my work every day.
11:30:15 marginalized folks can be invisible in these materials and in these stories. And you know, Rachel, not to extend the conversation because you and I both on the same page about this, but like you know one of the problems that I have in my work is, you
11:30:25 you know, do we want to ascribe that label to someone from a very long time ago, right, like, even if we like have 100% factual evidence that this person might have been queer, right.
11:30:37 Do we go back to the historical record and change that like is that ethically like is that something that, like, we should be doing and even just like sexuality, but also like race right like thinking about the necessity and race right when thinking about
11:30:51 these suffrage narratives like. Does it make sense for us to you to go back and change the description, like when and where is that ethical and also but also the same time like, what do we do, that's the history that's missing right like if that's something
11:31:07 that's really important to understand but it's also like would this person be really mad at us, if they looked at their right I give a whole talk about exactly this at the HA at the American Historical Association last January so like one second before,
11:31:26 David. And I yeah I mean I think this is exactly the issue and I sometimes I would the person be upset with they is that not how they would understand themselves as starkly anachronistic to use this terminology, but then there's a whole different set
11:31:39 of questions which is like is the problem that this collection was processed in 1993 and archival best practice or what was considered to be to like risky or what you wouldn't say unless you absolutely incontrovertibly new you know is different.
11:31:55 And that's a problem about the archives and evolving sort of social, cultural norms for us that's not about the subject and so that's a different problem.
11:32:05 And then there's I think it like an additional separate issue which is okay maybe it's an anachronism to use whatever term, but also we're talking about searching for things in databases like you want.
11:32:17 At the end of the day you need people to be able to go to world cat archives grid their universities library catalog and type in queer suffrage queer women voting whatever, and like returned meaningful results.
11:32:29 Yeah, so, at a certain point, like, one question is, well, would it is it appropriate to describe a person this way is that how they would have wanted to be describing what and then the next problem is separate there which is just we have to have a controlled
11:32:44 vocabulary.
11:32:46 And that's always going to be anachronistic because like I'm sitting here or someone's thinking of making a control vocabulary today in 2021, and it only works if we apply it across everything.
11:32:56 So yeah, how would you and Sephora narrative.
11:33:02 Fernanda. Do you believe that your project has disrupted existing narratives on women's suffrage.
11:33:10 Well, I think.
11:33:14 I was really glad to be able to find local women, local African American women who participated in the suffrage movement, and I probably I neglected to mention what, why was I just looking at Middlesex County was because the exhibit was co sponsored by
11:33:29 the or is co sponsored by the Middlesex County Office of arts and history.
11:33:36 And they supported the creation of a published catalog, which hasn't been published yet it's supposed to be published soon.
11:33:45 So that's why I was focusing on Middlesex County, and you know it's it's difficult to find an African American women.
11:33:56 You know, it was a few exceptions, who were involved with the suffrage movement in New Jersey, let alone in one county.
11:34:06 So, I was an MP and I knew that people have other people have been looking for this information and hadn't found it. So I was just so happy when I was able to find Ella rice, your woman from New Brunswick, who is involved in the suffrage movement.
11:34:27 And,
11:34:27 And also some other other women who Lillian Thompson and me Tim Brooke who, who were her, her colleagues.
11:34:39 And it was.
11:34:41 And I think the reason I found the information or found as much information as I did was really through working with the community, working with the New Brunswick Public Library, and my colleague Kim Adams I don't know if she might be on the call to.
11:35:01 She through her connections at the public library was able to reach out to Allah rice his granddaughter.
11:35:07 And she celebrates she's actually related to Susan Rice, who is was an advisor to President Obama and I think is is still in is now still in the in the White House and in some capacity.
11:35:21 So I was able to get a photograph of Allah from her granddaughter so that was amazing.
11:35:28 And we also reached out to the local Amy church.
11:35:34 And when many of these women were members, and were able to find out more about the other, the other two women and eatin book and William Thompson, who were super involved in in the church through them, but, um,
11:35:53 so I mean, and also how did these women, African American women get involved, they got involved through through the temperance movement.
11:36:03 And the temperance movement and doors suffrage, really early on.
11:36:11 I'm trying to think of the exact date if it was 1980s.
11:36:16 And the, the college women's clubs, which they. That was what they, they call themselves.
11:36:24 They endorse suffrage early on, too. So, I realized that there was a long history of support for sub region in the African American community even though, like what we found this specific doctors we found were sort of more in the later part of the period.
11:36:39 Yeah.
11:36:41 Hey, can I piggyback on that for a second. So, reminding me.
11:36:46 So one of the challenges right that we experienced, is that there are lots of black women doing work on women's suffrage in particular, black suffrage voting rights in general, but they're not often calling themselves suffragists are like, identifying
11:37:00 with the suffrage movement.
11:37:02 the suffrage movement. One of the things we did early on, not connected to the exhibit but as part of the law 19th amendment project is that we had a fantastic student worker a Harvard undergraduate who spent an entire summer combing through the microfilm
11:37:16 of the national notes which is the publication of the National Association of colored women's clubs, which is the umbrella organization of that. And it was just talking about and creating this incredible data set of the national officers and where they
11:37:34 came from in the country for a year from the founding of the organization through 1920, the different issue committees that they had so we could track the issues they were interested in over time, and how that changed, and part of the impetus for doing
11:37:49 that is that we wanted to be able to map that together with similar data, created by a political scientist at Penn named Don to about the CBC T, the women's Christian Temperance union, so you can actually see that Dr.
11:38:06 NECWC data set also on the 19th amendment portal, which is available to us and to look at and is super cool and has a lot of names of black women leaders in these organizations who are very politically involved, but related to that one of the other things
11:38:20 you know we have. We're a little bit different cuz we're not just a suffrage project it's the long 19th amendment and for me in particular I'm actually so I'm, I'm a leader 20th century historian, and I am interested I work on policy and politics and
11:38:38 MIT and urban history. And so, I always thinking like, Well, okay, what happens after right like so you pass the law you make the pause and then what how does it get implemented right so like the interesting civil rights decade isn't really the 60s it's
11:38:52 the 70s, for example, and similarly here I really was interested in like well what happens next. And so we were very interested in the really incredible new scholarship about the connection between for example the 19th amendment and the 15th amendment
11:39:07 and the way that women's suffrage opens new avenues to press for black voting rights, led by African American women if you would have tried to register to vote and then take their husbands and fathers and their whole church with them and then you have
11:39:25 a new voting rights drive and then you get a new wave of the clan.
11:39:29 And it's like really closely connected right so I tried to figure out how to like what are the things you can search for when you're not searching for the word suffrage when you're not live and when you get past 1920, especially when you're talking about
11:39:41 women of color was a real, that was a real part of the challenge.
11:39:46 And, you know, what you said Rachel makes me think about to like the correlation right thinking about black women, not necessarily identifying as a suffer just but also tying that to women of color African American women not calling themselves feminists
11:40:03 and sort of seeing the connections that are between, you know those sort of to historical conversations and language right it's a different panel for a different time.
11:40:13 What does it mean to look for disability and suffrage when you have like disabled people being explicitly excluded from voting rights by on the basis of disability what how do you think about Native voting, you know I'm this is what we've been trying
11:40:25 to, I don't know that we've been entirely successful but this has been like the big background conversations of everything for us.
11:40:35 So Amanda, how has your project. Do you believe that your project has disrupted existing narratives on women's suffrage. Well I hope so because you know I feel so strongly that visual arguments, really were so important in the period, and and bringing
11:40:56 them back to visual life like when we say, hidden or invisible in the art museum setting we really mean no one has seen images of this. And so to scour and find them and find meaningful stories that go along with those whether it's paintings or political
11:41:16 cartoons.
11:41:18 And then of course I'm really proud of the, the suffrage mural that we put together because it engage contemporary artists as well. And, and, and all of those artists are award winning in their own rights for working on children's books about civil rights
11:41:36 about voting rights so those, those are all people still in the visual game today. Yeah. And then, you know, it just reminded me with the comments we were talking about.
11:41:45 We asked early on, like, well, so why ended 1920 right why, why not take your exhibition past there especially since there was so much when it came to marginalized women.
11:41:57 The story came next, the story that came after. So we are also mounted a companion exhibition called witness to history, which was about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which also had an anniversary in 2020.
11:42:12 And so it was a photograph exhibit of the final Selma March, and it was so interesting to see the connection between the youthful faces marching in 19, you know, 15, and the same very youthful faces marching in 1965.
11:42:32 And I think on one in one respect what it opened my eyes to is that how each of these very visual political movements, and the voting rights movement in general was a young person's movement.
11:42:45 Right. And that's where the strides were made so that's a connection I probably wouldn't have put together without the to exhibit side by side going like God john lewis is like 21 years old in this picture.
11:42:57 And, you know, the 18 year you know 24 year old Alice Paul in this photograph. And so, I think, at least for our audiences outside Philadelphia. Not only did it, it visually disrupt, what was thought of as what suffrage look like but I hope made a connection
11:43:16 to much later 20th century meaningful voting rights issues and of course we had voting rights issues, up to the moment to deal with it was still up right now, you know, we'd be doing Georgia programs, though, sure, for sure.
11:43:31 That's awesome.
11:43:32 So, we have a little more time left and I have one last question, but I wanted to pose to our panelists if they had any questions for each other. We do have a little of time.
11:43:42 So if any of the panelists have any questions for another this is your moment to ask them.
11:43:48 My question is a very selfish and not really exhibit related question but with my portal hat on, I'm so I'm going to spend so much time on both of your websites combing through these examples, but I would love to talk to both of you.
11:44:01 Afterwards, about the collections that you used to find the materials especially about the black women in your, in your exhibits and about the local women because we would love to make sure that those are represented in our database so that people who
11:44:18 come to search in the portal can find those women there. Sure.
11:44:26 Yeah, you know, one of the stories I didn't mention in my presentation but it was local for us is and it's not like she's an unknown for sure Alice Dunbar Nelson's work for the suffrage movement.
11:44:37 Right. she spent the summer of 1915 working for the Pennsylvania suffrage movement I kept a journal, and the journal, is it the University of Delaware and it was digitize while I was working on this we were able to reprint the entire journal
11:44:55 page through it and read it during the exhibition, and she kept a scrapbook essentially as a journalist scrapbook. Of all the events she went to. It was long quotes of her speeches that she gave, there were flyers and handbills from her, her appearances.
11:45:12 And so, you know, like I mentioned the crisis being so interesting to look through we recreated reproductions of those two issues so people could sit in the galleries and read the magazine or read Alice number Nelson's journals.
11:45:26 She's also one of my favorite women in history Amanda so.
11:45:31 Oh, absolutely. I have a spare copy I can send. Oh my God, because of course we have the physical things out of the gallery.
11:45:40 But they are we have links to to those whole issues on our whole manuscripts on our website as well.
11:45:50 Yeah, no, Nelson's papers just at the you know the next closest University Library and reading them and nowhere was she like I was done by Nelson suffragist if I had searched for suffragist I wouldn't have come with her come to her, but knowing the period
11:46:06 history, and who she was married to and where she was working and you know, she just.
11:46:14 Of course I included her portrait in the wall of portraits as well. She's awesome.
11:46:20 Can't wait to talk to you a lot more about that.
11:46:24 I know that, unfortunately, Fernanda has to leave us pretty soon so I'm going to move on to my final question which is moving forward, you know, how should glam and glam galleries libraries, archives and museums, how can these institutions reimagine their
11:46:40 approach to storytelling on the subject of separate. So Fernanda Would you mind sort of starting us off on this question.
11:46:51 Um,
11:46:55 well I think working on this exhibit I really realize how important it was to recover this, the stories of women who are left out of the suffrage narrative, like whether it was actually American, Asian women Indigenous women and working class women.
11:47:12 Even though it was sometimes difficult to find information.
11:47:17 I guess I, I should have mentioned I was able to find information through Ancestry. com. so that's another way.
11:47:26 Another way to find information, actually got my own subscription for this purpose because our library doesn't subscribe to it.
11:47:35 And.
11:47:37 And as I mentioned before, the importance of, you know, that you may have to actually go outside of the usual academic
11:47:46 ways of doing research by connected.
11:47:49 As far as like going to other archives and actually trying to connect with people in the community and, you know, you may be surprised at what you find.
11:48:00 Amanda.
11:48:03 You know, I think just playing off of what Fernando just said one of my greatest connections was to the Delta Sigma Theta community, and having their knowledge and resources there historians among them, pointing out things I didn't know.
11:48:22 Their historians among them, pointing out things I didn't know. And then of course having being able to invite them to the gallery and having like a big Delta Sigma Theta event to celebrate was greatest I know I pulled the image but I mean all in, in
11:48:35 their red, you know.
11:48:37 And so I think also one of the, one of the initiatives for this exhibition was to find those community based groups in our area that had an interest in voting rights.
11:48:49 And so we made a lot of connections to, you know, programs for domestic abuse programs that funded women's initiatives that supported girls in pursuit of science, all sorts of, and also of course the traditional colleges and universities and obviously
11:49:08 the Alice Paul Institute is nearby and and connecting and just having meetings just getting together and talking about what was important from their own point of view about the suffrage movement, and it's not something that, you know, it's not exactly
11:49:23 a community focus group it wasn't like I selected you know like I need five diverse points of view and I need five people to represent them. It was inviting the community partners to come and and participate as much as they wanted to but they open so
11:49:38 many doors to either other potential lenders or local stories. And so that's something that, that just sitting in a database and typing in search words was never going to get me.
11:49:50 Yeah. Yeah, sure.
11:49:53 And Rachel.
11:49:55 I don't, I don't have a ton to add to the to this part I think I mean, a lot of the same things we were also really interested in
11:50:06 trying to work through sort of other channels like trying to like, like the divine nine trying to figure out all of me and we tried.
11:50:24 Also to, you know, find materials and things to these other ways but you know the way that my project works it's so much about pulling together this archival database and pointing it and all the other stuff is kind of ancillary so that the teaching materials
11:50:33 in the community engagement, we did a fantastic project with our local public high school in Cambridge on women and voting today where we asked people to go out and sort of interview the women in their lives to ask, you know, 100 years after the 19th
11:50:47 amendment gave some women the right to vote, are you participating in the 2020 election.
11:50:55 Why, and we really got some really cool stuff from that but the real focus of my project has been right to pull together to uncover and bring together archival materials that haven't previously been thought of as suffrage materials or that haven't previously
11:51:11 been thought of as being related to each other and part of this conversation and sort of to put them all together in one place. And that's a really different kind of research here I'm used to doing the kind of research that you guys are talking about
11:51:22 really getting into the materials and in with the subject matter matter and now I'm like really actually living in this world of like databases and search terms and how can we use those in the most effective way to uncover the stuff right.
11:51:37 So that's a very different.