As Women’s History Month winds down, Senator John Heinz History Center opens a major exhibit that explores how local women changed history.
“Too often the stories of women have been overlooked in the annals of history,” said Andrew Masich, History Center president and CEO. “We hope to flip the script with this exhibition.”
“A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh,” running March 23 through Oct. 6, fills 9,000 square feet with more than 300 artifacts and photos that tell the stories of women who have made a difference.
Get to know journalist Nellie Bly and check out the small alligator carryall she used to travel around the world in a record-breaking 72 days in 1889. Her famous face was seen in advertising, trading cards and even board games (one is included here) as the symbol of the emerging modern woman.
Snap a selfie with a life-size Rosie the Riveter and learn how this onetime controversial image became an iconic image for female empowerment.
See Peggy Owen Skillen’s illustrations of Oscar the Grouch and Mr. Suffleupagus. The Carnegie Tech grad is one of the people who helped to create and unify the character concepts for “Sesame Street.”
Examine gowns from the 1830s to 20th–century debutante balls, plus vintage maternity wear for working women, costumes from the National Negro Opera Company and the Oscar de la Renta aluminum-thread bikini commissioned by Alcoa.
The exhibit opens with a timeline that notes key moments and legislative highlights when women struggled to gain equal rights and full citizenship. The first date is in 1776 when Abigail Adams sent a letter to her husband John Adams at the Constitutional Convention. Her advice: Don’t forget the ladies. (They forgot the ladies.) The overview covers abolitionists, suffragettes and the advocates who brought about national legislation for children with disabilities, all the way to the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, which remains in limbo.
Throughout the exhibit, you will meet women who made strides as inventors, entrepreneurs, athletes and artists. But the famous names are not the only ones of note.
“While we are, of course, focusing on some of the barrier breakers and the people who set milestones,” said Leslie Przybylek, senior curator, “we’re also looking at those stories that reflect the reality that you don’t have to be a barrier breaker for your history to matter and for it to be a part of the larger story of Pittsburgh and this place.
“Our message throughout this is: As women fought and struggled and debated their own issues on things related to their families and neighborhoods, they also often made this a better place for everyone.”
To emphasize that message, the museum curators pulled items from the History Center collection that had never been displayed. Some exhibit pieces are on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. Others have been culled from the collections of community organizations. The possibility of acquiring even more artifacts — and stories — is an underlying goal.
“From the beginning to the end of the exhibit,” Przybylek said, “we’re hoping that the stories that are shown here will get people thinking and result in us learning about other collections and other stories that should be added to the museum collection.”
If your attic holds these kinds of treasures, write to acquisitions@heinzhistorycenter.org.
“A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh” is included with museum admission.
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