 Welcome, and I am Elizabeth Sackler and I'd like to welcome you to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. We opened in 2007 in March, so we're coming up on our second anniversary, which is a very exciting thing on March 21. Thank you, yes. And thank you to all of you, and thank you to this wonderful museum and to my staff at the Foundation. And it's wonderful to see you all here today. When I was visioning the Center for Feminist Art, part of what I wanted to have here, in addition to housing the dinner party and having it available all the time, and in addition to our Herstory Gallery, in addition to the feminist gallery, is this space. Because this space brings to people all kinds of discussions, artists, politics, writers, you name it, that otherwise we wouldn't be able to do. So we have called it the Forum because it is a forum. It's a forum for ideas for discussions and also for a chance to celebrate the kind of works and things that we're going to be seeing today. So I'm delighted that you're here. Obviously, our focus is on feminist activism and feminist art. Today, we have two artists in the audience with us. Christine Biagi is with us. And also Linda Stein would like to welcome you, and thank you for coming. And if I miss somebody, please tell me. Nancy, I'm sorry. Thank you, I didn't see you. Linda Heibler. Oh, hello, Linda. How are you? Good. Oh, this is great. So today, yes, they did. And of course, we just couldn't pass that one by. We sort of stole it, obviously, as derivative. But it is a celebration of women who dared. And the collection of photographs by Dale Kaplan and Donna Hennises is comprised of thousands of photographs. And they like to describe them of remarkable women who did exceptional things. Of course, I like to think that all women are remarkable and that all women do exceptional things. In this instance, of course, we have some documentation of that. And it was really fun putting these remarks together because listed, Dale and Donna have listed, and from their list of the actions and the activities of the women, I just sort of was clumping them together. And it comes out as a wonderful clump when I started to itemize them out. Actresses, adventurers and artists, bullfighters and ballplayers, circus performers and models. Doesn't that sort of make sense? Nurses and nuns, politicians and students and suffragists and spies. So we have also women who in their daily activities are caring for children, breastfeeding, cooking, cleaning and gardening. I say happily are included and accorded equal status with political or cultural achievements and well they should be. They include familiar names, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Emilia Earhart, Calamity Jane, one of my favorite people in history, Margo Fontaine, another favorite, Mary Todd Lincoln, Grandma Moses, Gertrude Stein, Sojourner Truth, Victoria Woodhull, who was in our exhibition of women's votes. I don't know if you had a chance to see that when it was at the Hirstory Gallery. And some names that I was not familiar with, is it Conchita? Chitron or Citron? Who was a bullfighter? Love it, love it, didn't know there was a woman bullfighter. Pauline Cushman, who was a Civil War Union spy. Fanny Gorman, strong woman. I guess she was lifting weights, yes. Jeannie Lamar, who was a champion, Bantam weight boxer. So obviously their collections features amateur press and candid images as well as fine art photographs by recognized masters. And all of the photographs are original and vintage prints. And I want to apologize to people who are standing in the back. We have a full house and I hope there's a place to lean and to rest yourself when you need it. And we'll see if we can provide additional chairs. So I would like to introduce Dale Kaplan, who is vice president and director of photographs at Swan Auction Galleries. If you haven't been there, I'm sure it's a treat that you would enjoy seeing. It's New York's oldest specialty auction house. She has been a photograph specialist on the Antiques Road Show since 1998. Has appeared as a commentator for TV segments produced by the Hirstory Channel. I'm seeing it. I am already... Good. It's changing. Been programmed. The Hirstory Channel, Discovery Channel, Bravo TV, and curated photography exhibitions from museums in the United States and abroad. Ms. Kaplan has contributed essays to publications devoted to photography, including the education of a photographer with Alworth Press in 2007 and the forthcoming in the vernacular, which is Boston University Press in 2008, it says. So I guess it's out? It is out. And she has lectured extensively about vernacular imagery and visual culture. And I thank her for being here. Donna Hannes is the author of The Queen of Myself, Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife, which was published by Monarch Press in 2005. She is an urban shaman, shawoman, and contemporary ceremonialist. So if you need something after this wonderful lecture, give her a holler. She was commemorated in the New Yorker and named New York City's unofficial commissioner of public spirit. And the village voice calls her part performance artist, part witch, which I think is a compliment, and part social organizer for Planet Earth. So this is a very great piece of energy. And all of you who are here who are embodying the same energy, I thank you for coming. Her public work has received citations from the Mayor's Dinkins and Koch and grants from NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She's a multi-published author. She also writes a weekly column for UPI's Religion and Spirituality Forum. And artists included in WAC, Art and the Feminist Revolution, which many of you may have seen, and was featured in Feminists Who Changed America's 63 to 60, 70. What is it? I blopped it off. 73. Sometimes. By Barbara Love. In 2007, and she received an award from the Veteran Feminists of America. So please join me in a hearty welcome for our wonderful panelists today. Thank you. Welcome. It is really great to see you all here. And thank you so much for coming. And yes, I hope your feet don't hurt at the end of this presentation. Before we start, I would like on behalf of both of us to thank Dr. Sackler, Elizabeth, who has been great. And I really appreciate your interest in this collection and your support of it. Thank you very much. Our collection is called The Better Half. And Dale's going to give a little bit of an overview about the collection. Well, The Better Half is composed of about 2,000 photographs. You're going to see a small percentage of them today. And what we decided to do about 15 years ago when we looked at the history of photography, looked at our personal backgrounds and thought, we want a joint project. We want to do something that addresses women, art, photography, history. And we began to focus on pictures of women doing things. The photographs in our collection, as Elizabeth said, are vintage photographs. They're original first-generation photographs that span the entire history of photography. Now, with regard to the images, the reason I make that point is most of the images in our collection are anonymous. Most of the subjects in our collection are unknown. So the techniques associated with the history of photography, in addition to bringing these pictures to life, because we really love our collection, let me tell you, we really, really love it. They allow us to date the pictures. It allows us to create a narrative that's both chronological, anecdotal, and, of course, historical when it comes to women of accomplishment, some of the names Elizabeth mentioned earlier. So what we thought we would do is talk a little bit about our personal interests, our backgrounds, and shall I move to the first slide? No. No. Okay. This is how we work. You're getting a preview of our collaboration. The first question that everybody asks us when the collection comes up in conversation is, how did you get started? Why did you do this? What gave you the idea to do this? And as Dale mentioned, we wanted, our lives are so different. We're involved in such completely different arenas of life. We thought, wouldn't it be great to work on a collaborative project? And I come out of working on several collaborative projects with women, and I really love that. I was part of the very first consciousness-raising group in New York, and from there I was on one of the, on the editorial board of one of the issues of Heresies Magazine. If any of you remember Heresies Magazine, a journal of feminism and art or something like that. And then after that, Dale and I both, although the way we met was that I replaced her, not because she wasn't good, because she was leaving town, as a member of Disband, which was a women's performance group. And I still belong to a goddess group that started with the Heresies issue, and we still meet once a month, 30 years later. So I love working with groups of women, and this seemed a really interesting possibility. So what did we have in common? Dale is the photo expert, of course, but I do have a love of photography and a private photo ritual practice, as it were. And we both feel very connected to the lives of women in women's herstory. So this is how we got started, and we thought, well, we'll collect photographs of women. Isn't that interesting? And then I thought, well, not just photographs of any woman. Photographs of every woman, for sure, in an archetypal sense, but years ago, 100 years ago, a master's thesis was called Women in Art, Object or Subject. And of course, my conclusion was object, because if you walk around most museums, women are depicted either as lounging on a shez, or as standing behind their man, or just another pretty face. And I was really interested in women as subjects and the stories that they had to tell, and that's what is so special about the Sackler Center, where we are right now. So this is what got us started, this first slide that you're going to see. Yeah, we're doing that. Your wish is our command. Yes. Now this is a family photograph of mine, and the story that came with it that my mother always told me is this was my grandmother with a bunch of her friends. They were all married women with children, and they were having a pajama party. But what's interesting, several things are interesting in this picture. First of all, what's interesting is that even though they were married women with children, they still had these two chaperones who were not in their night clothes. I guess they were just making sure there was no hanky-panky in the sleepover. But what really moved me about this picture, because on first look you would say, well, these are maybe objects. These are just women sitting in a row, and their outfits are interesting. The idea of having a pajama party is interesting in the 19 teens. But what fascinates me about this picture, and you'll know who she is, is my grandmother. If you look at the faces of these women, they might be objects. Although I hate to say that because of course we know they're not. But there's one woman in particular who is really asserting her personality. She's downright flirting with the photographer that come hither and look in her eyes. I can't believe it, but that's my grandmother. So that's what got us started. This was our first picture. Another reason that we really love this picture is the notion of a woman in a picture flirting with a photographer. Who's the photographer? It wasn't my grandfather. We don't know exactly the gender. We don't know how this came about. But the narrative, something started to gel in relation to building a collection that was going to have a lot of interesting stories associated with it. So in terms of today's presentation, we're focusing on adventurous women, daring women. But what does it mean to be a daring woman in our culture? In the 19th century it could have meant simply being un-lady-like, wanting to participate in sports, wanting to be politically active, cross-dressing. In terms of 20th century economics and as we'll see images during the First World War, it could have an association with economic necessity and taking on jobs and roles that were again stretching the boundaries of what it meant to be defined as a woman. We actually came up with a little list and it would be very curious if you have another idea of what's daring to just shout it out because I think that would be fascinating. We have somebody who invents her own life, somebody who defies expectation, who expresses her own individuality, who may be un-lady-like. I cannot find this quote, but I seem to remember that Mother Jones, who was a union organizer and pistol and anarchist, said something like, Rockefellers have ladies, but the good Lord God made women. And who pushed the boundaries. Does anybody else have an idea of what would be daring? It kind of covers it, but I thought maybe with all these creative women somebody might have another definition. So our next slide. So when we look at a picture like this, which has sort of Ouija-esque associations, but in fact it's not a Ouija photograph, we bring to the picture a kind of reading. What's going on here? I mean we see to the right of the woman smoke coming out of the window. We assume that she's leaping for her life. There's what appears to be a policeman in the foreground. But oftentimes the real beauty of this collection and looking at images is this shared dialogue. Well, what do you see? What do you think is going on in this picture? Because again, many of the pictures in our collection aren't by anonymous photographers. The subjects aren't identified. It's a vernacular collection that is grounded in the history of art and social history and in feminism. So quite a difference, right? Until the Industrial Revolution, the lives that most women led were pretty circumspect. Certainly, and we all know when the dinner party attests to it, there have always been daring, amazing women throughout history and throughout culture. But these were the exceptions. And what happened during, well, that's what I'm ahead of myself here, up until that point the only way that women could really be out in the world, again for the most part, was to read about it. And that is if somebody taught them how to read. Because it wasn't considered necessary for most women to be educated or to be literate. So the doors for a woman were really in her book. And then the Industrial Revolution kind of opened a window for women. It allowed them to go into the workplace in a different way and in much greater numbers. And it allowed them to be more mobile and less dependent on their male counterparts to take them places and chaperone them as it were. So in looking at this image and some of the other images from the 19th century, because we bring so much of our own expectations to looking at older pictures, it's important to understand that this is how this woman chose to be represented. She went to the local studio photographer. She brought her book. She set up the tableau, I'm sure, with the photographer, herself because photography from the beginning was an equal opportunity employer. There were many women daguerreotypists, many women practicing photography from the 1840s onward. So this notion of how do I want to be shown is very much a staged kind of notion. And what we see in this wonderful amortype is sort of taking it to the next step. This idea of a really curious, really mischievous woman looking out the seeker, the kind of quintessential seeker that is this foundation of our collection. So this is an amortype. It's a unique image. It's actually a photograph on glass. They're housed in these little leather miniature books called cases, leather cases. It's protected with a sheet of glass, a preserver. So you get a whole package here, and you can begin to understand how precious photographs were, how really special they were to the 19th century viewer. So the window opened, the door opened, and there's no going back for us. We're going to Harvard, or Vassar actually, which was the first woman's college. So women started getting educated and started going out into the world, living lives on their own. Is that Elizabeth Taylor? No, couldn't possibly be. Maybe Hood Doppelganger. Couldn't possibly be. This is an album from Wells College, which a woman put together. And we have several albums. We love albums because album making and even today scrapbooking is the big thing. There are whole stores and television programs dedicated to the art of scrapbooking. So here we love these albums not just for the individual pictures, but because of the writing on them. And sometimes they're very creative and they're little drawings and they're just so personal and so a real look into these women's lives. So you've seen these blue-toned images if you like to go antiquing, if you're a big yard sale aficionado. These are cyanotypes, one of the more popular photographic techniques in the 1890s turn of the last century. And what's interesting about it is that it really was a technique directed to women, especially students, amateurs, because there weren't no chemicals involved in making these pictures. They were printed out with the sunlight. And so in a lot of the student albums that we see from Wells College and from other universities, this is the predominant technique. And as Donna said, the fact that the pictures are annotated, they're captioned, really gives us a lot of information about college life. It looked like it was fun. You can't go back, forget it. That was quick. You all recognize that. We all have one just like it. Oh, you did go. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. So, you know, this is very recognizable. And we really like pictures like this that are resonant to all of us. I mean, we can look at this and we see ourselves in it. We see our mother in it. And also, personally, we each have such a different, similar, the same, and also different take on creating this collection. Personally, I love when it comes to a type, whether it's a student or a nurse or a teacher, I love to try to find them of every decade. It's so interesting to see, you know, how we have progressed. And so she's very recent. So once women have gotten their education, and once the roads were built, they took off. And this is, yeah, we love this picture. Both of us love it. It's so lyrical. And it's just like, it's a big world out there. And my bag is packed and here I come. Watch that world. It just, again, these pictures that don't have information associated with them sort of lend themselves to such poetic interpretations. And the composition of this picture, the way she's just gazing out into the sea, the world, it, we do, we love this picture. And this is the world we started, you know, we started off on foot. And don't you love that? I mean, hiking in those long dresses and those boots with little heels, slippery leather soles, and hats, perfectly pressed white blouses. Long sleeves. Long sleeves, of course. Of course. So here we are. And, you know, and if there's a ledge, you're going to find a woman on it. So that says cliff dwellers. December 30th, 07. Ooh, you have good eyes. 1907. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is the angel trail going down to the Grand Canyon. You know, again, how do they keep those blouses clean? I want to know. Now, there are going to be a few pictures of her. Her name is Mrs. Maxwell. And she had two skills. One, she was an expert Marx woman. And she was the first woman taxidermist. And we'll talk a little bit more about the taxidermy, but here she was out hunting with her hounds. With her real dog. Yes. We don't know whether that's before or after it died. This one we do know. No, this is a fox. So this is a stereo image. It's captioned. It's dated 1876. What we start to see in the 19th century images is this notion that women support their activities by selling photographs of what they do. And so she was someone who exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. What's interesting about her is that she elected not to exhibit in the women's pavilion, and that there even was a women's pavilion, deserves further research, but that she decided to exhibit in the natural history pavilion and created this diorama that apparently almost sent her into bankruptcy. But she was a woman who was a naturalist. She was a woman who had, as Donna said, these other skill sets. And she was a legend in her own time. And who would have known if we didn't find this picture? Now she has a name. Her name is Mrs. Malan. And I'm going to read this because there's a printed caption that was affixed to the back of the mount of this. This strange woman has become notorious throughout Colorado for her queer manner of living. The cabin is situated on the top of Gold Hill opposite Buena Vista at an elevation of 10,000 feet or about 3,000 feet higher than the town. The cabin was built mostly by herself. She is also making all of her furniture alone. Mrs. Malan has lived in this odd place for two years. She carries water a mile for cooking and often carries a sack of flour, which of course would be a 10 or 50-pound sack, up the steep hill for three or four miles where others can scarcely follow empty-handed. So she's a kind of shero, but again, what's noteworthy about this is she's selling this picture. And she's talking about herself in the third person as this kind of queer, local oddball. And I mean, here's the photograph. There she is posing in front of her cabin. Guess what? There's no Kodak camera available then. She's soliciting, or I should say soliciting, the services of a local photographer creating this whole legend around herself and supplementing her income. Pretty cool. And the exploration continues. This is in the 1940s. Again, they're wearing high heels to explore this cave. Isn't that the only way to do it? I guess. One wants to be ladylike. It all costs. So as I said, if there's a cliff, you're going to find a woman on it. And her loyal dog. So not only did they set off by foot, but by wheel. And this is pre-bloomer. This is bicycle with long skirts again. This is, I think, our earliest bicycle picture. And interestingly enough, I'm always going to be interjecting this photographic theme. The introduction of the bicycle is parallel with the introduction of the Kodak camera. So you see this whole recreational element emerging in the late 1880s, 1890s. And it was really revolutionary. Women in long skirts on bikes. And then cars. And, you know, look, we know that there are places in the world today that it's illegal for women to drive. So this is very early. And then this is a kind of a chronological sequence. So not only were they out for a joy ride, she's on a serious adventure here with her map. This is a gas station she's stopped in. Oh, wait a second. What does that say? Coast... Oh, oh. Interesting. It's coast tires. That's her extra tire on the side of the... And once you have a car, you got to take care of it. I'd say this is the 30s based on the car, although I'm not a car expert, but I think so. Yeah. 34. 34. That was precise. Wow. Okay, and here we go again. How do you change your tire? You've got to wear a skirt and high heels. You know? Yeah, this is the 50s. And this is an automative high school. So she's actually in school learning to be a mechanic. So we should probably say that, but finding these pictures is kind of difficult. They're just not at the top of the matted photograph heap when you go into a trade show or when you walk into a gallery. This really has taken a lot of discovery and invention because a visual history of women, not that important. And so we've really done our thorough homework. Don is just great about going into every single picture in every single stack. She's very thorough. And then we go for the speed. So this is an early motorcycle. And then we just took the sky. Again, notice her outfit. It just drives me crazy. I also think if you could, if the picture were a little more readable on the screen, you would see that she too is flirting with a photographer. She's having a wonderful time up there. Now we do know who she is. This is Ruth Law. Yeah, this is Ruth Law. And on the back of the picture, there's a handwritten notation that says, Ruth Law, our first woman aviatrix. And yours truly, but we don't know who you truly is, in Daytona, Florida, July 4th, 1921. So this is an early biplane. And again, she's definitely dressed for the skies. And we know her. She's everybody's shero. And, you know, even though she came along later, she was definitely the premier aviatrix and captured everybody's imagination. Now this, all I know about this picture is that it's from Portland, Oregon. And she's got her map and she's ready to take off in her heels. Well, now you see her name. Her full name is Valentina Vladimirova Terescova. She was the very first woman in space. Russian, Soviet, we should say. Yes, let's see. So that's Sally Ride in the lower left. That's Judith Resnick in the top right, who perished in the Challenger tragedy. And Margaret Rea Sidone. Right. She is next to Sally Ride, the blonde woman up front. Catherine Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Fisher and Judith Resnick. So now we're transitioning to another category. As women's horizons widen, broaden, so do their ambitions. These are a bunch of firsts. This is Tennessee Claflin. Her nickname was Tenney. She was Victoria Woodhall's sister. And the two of them were the first stockbrokers, first woman stockbrokers. They had a brokerage house and then they went on to publish the Woodhall and Claflin Weekly, which featured articles written only by women and about women's rights, education of women, and free love. Her name is Louisa Parker, and she's one of the very first women doctors. She graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1861. She practiced in Boston for 38 years and in her spare time had 10 children. This is a physician. Down the photo, we don't know her name or where she practiced. It's just one of those fantastic images that again is posed. It's done intentionally. But to find a photograph of a woman doctor, pretty special. These are the first women gendarmes in Paris in 1935. There they are pictured in their fabulous outfits. It looks like the heels gave way to clunky shoes. They did a lot of walking. And our collection also includes photographs from around the world. We want to see how there is this interrelationship between the quest for equal rights in England and France and the United States and how it all kind of mixes and interrelates. So, oh yes, and this is an early firefighter. And this is a drill, a practice drill of rescue. So, that's kind of amazing. And then the next series that you're going to see are all factory pictures. And this is what Dale was mentioning before that, oh I'm sorry, I forgot about her. Yes, and actually we just, just, just obtained a photograph of Florence Nightingale, which would be in the slideshow before her, but it came so late we didn't even have time to scan it. So, but this is a field nurse in the field, as you can see during World War II. Now the factory. Now you know, we're all familiar and love the idea of Rosie the Riveter. And that was World War II. I don't think I ever realized that there were women actively working in factories to support World War I. And here they are. And they're just a whole series of pictures and this is what Dale was mentioning before about what is daring. Sometimes it's daring to leave your home and your children and your whatever and go out and work in a filthy, dangerous, noisy place because you had to, either for your own personal economic situation or because of a greater political situation which called people into service. So this is a scene from a munitions factory in Britain and again the Rosie the Riveter archetype in some ways can be traced to how women's roles were in transition during the First World War and how that sort of trickles down to the United States during the Second World War. This is all heavy, loud machinery. Women working in skirts. Of course they're not allowed to wear anything more comfortable. This is the Curtis Aviation Factory. Glenn Curtis was one of the pioneers of the American airplane industry and he had women workers in his employ. I just wanted to say that all of these are fascinating but we don't really know who these women are. We don't have their personal stories. This is called 20 ton crane. O-E-T whatever that means. We're not quite sure what these are. It looks cleaner and quieter than the other ones. I think it is parachutes again related to British military presence in the First World War. Exactly. Actually since we've been collecting these I've read that the herstory of women working in factories to support war actually went all the way back to the Civil War and I'd give anything to find photographs of this but women hand made in little molds the lead bullets which probably killed them actually. So for all you art history students this picture has the association with Rodchenko with Lewis Hind is kind of turning the industrial wheel and here's a woman behind it. Is it a sailboat they're making? Some sort of a boat part I think. Yeah it looks like an airplane wing. This is more Curtis motor corp. And we're still building them. This is World War II. And then after a hard day at the factory girls just want to have a little fun. It was fun to look up women's baseball to do a Google search because the first 20 pages are all about women as spectators at baseball games. But if you dig a little deeper you discover that Vassar keeps coming up. Vassar had the first women's baseball team. There were teams in the 1870s called the blondes and the brunettes. There were games in which teams, female teams played against male teams and this picture is probably, yeah there it is, it's dated 1891. So it's 30, 40 years into the game but again very rare to find an image like this and they're all identified which is even better. Now just notice this is called the young ladies baseball club because the next one now we've got the Bloomer girls not so ladylike. They were not only daring because they played the sport but they put on pants. Now does anybody know what game this is exactly? It's a shot put. Shot put. Oh my god. So they're a team. I didn't realize a shot put had a string attached to it. This is a 1927 high school portrait. And the teacher. They figured out their outfits pretty well. The striped socks. This is Jean Lamar, the world Bantamweight champion and she was popular in the 1920s. This picture is dated 1925. It looks like she's socking her manager. I guess he didn't do a good job. And here she is. Here she is. Conchita. Yeah. Today? Are you kidding? Oh, that's totally bizarre. Wow. Oh, well, you know, here's to Conchita. She was amazing. There's a really great story associated with this picture and the next one. We were on a photo searching trip in Texas, you know, from little town to little town looking for old photographs and we drive into a town called Del Rio, which is on the Mexican border. What was the town in Mexico called? Acuña. Acuña. And we didn't see any antique stores or trade shows or, you know, and I said, you know what? There's an old photo studio. Let's just go in there and see. And there was an elderly woman behind the counter and we said, you know, we're looking for old photographs. That's all we said. And so she pulled out all the photographs from the famous flood of whatever, oh, 12, where all the bridges in Del Rio blew over. And we said, well, actually, we're looking for photographs of people, specifically women. Do you have any old photographs of women? And she said, oh, like this? Say, oh, my God. So here we have the one picture of Conchita and the second picture. She was a matadora who retired at the age of 28 after killing 800 bulls. So she was a force to be reckoned with and apparently her ring was in Acuña, Mexico. So the pictures of her were made by the local photographer in Texas. She was actually Chilean born. And here's Althea Gibson, first tennis champion. It's really wonderful. All the pictures that we've seen of her, she's kissing a trophy. And here's, oh, Sherman, this is just for you. This is Kitty Adams, girl wrestler from Long Island. And in preparation for this picture, Sherman, we did a little research. You can see a video of her on YouTube. And then we move into the arts. And you want to talk about this, too? This is a 10-type photograph. 10 types were introduced around the time of the Civil War. There are those little silver pictures that you see that everybody thinks are made of tin when they're actually made of iron. They're unique. They're one of a kind. And to find a picture where women are actively painting at their easels, again, there's a kind of spontaneous element to a photograph like that that's, 10 types are on the cusp of this sort of revolution of the staid, posed photographic image and the freer, liberated photographic image. Aviso will travel. It's kind of wonderful because it's like, how did she get there? If anybody knows the name of this artist, please raise your hand. We got this picture. No information as to who she is, reputation, nothing. But the notion of posing in her studio, what appears to be a fairly squalid studio, with her cherished works of art, this is just, it's amazing. It's amazing to find anything like this. There's President Washington on the rear wall. It's probably 1880s, 1890s. And a bottle of wine on the floor. Got to get in the mood. I think it's turpentine. And here's Mrs. Maxwell again, in her studio, creating her stuffed animals, as it were. Actually, there's a description of what she did at the Centennial Exhibition. Oh no, she was in the Kansas-Colorado building. And she did a Rocky Mountain display that fascinated both the visitors and the press. She used paste, pulverized ore, water, lime, gravel, and evergreens as her construction materials. And she built a realistic natural landscape in which to place all of her wildlife specimens, which she had personally killed in, stuffed. And here's Grandma Moses, aka Anna Mary Robertson, who started painting at the age of 78. Her first paintings were available for two and three dollars. She was picked up by the gallery at Yen, which recognized her skills as a naive folk artist. And the rest, as they say, is history. She worked in Maine. She worked upstate New York. And again, this is a picture, an early color picture, by Harry Warnacky, a daily news photographer who did all the covers of the Rotogravures in the 30s, 40s, and 50s in color. And we haven't been able to identify which painting she's working on, but there she is, in C2. She worked for almost three decades and created 3,600 paintings. This is a Brasai photograph of sculptors at the Academy Julienne in Paris in 1935. And of course, what's interesting about the context of this picture is women were allowed to model, but they were not allowed to be students. This is a picture that's after the School of Thomas Acons. Again, the notion that a woman, young woman would get untrassed in the United States in front of male students was pretty racy. And Thomas Acons, as some of you may know, was excoriated for not only allowing it, but encouraging it, and was forced to resign his position at the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts. But this picture has a kind of visual resonance because there's the nude model next to the nude male figure. And this picture, if we, if you have time... Might be a little familiar. Yeah, to look at the Burning Down the House show. It's an icon of feminism. There's Carol E. Schneemann. This is a fluxus event that she did in 1975 where she apparently came out fully dressed in an apron, started to disrobe, and eventually removes this scroll from her vagina. There's a life-size photograph of it in the exhibition next door. 1975. And this is The Grilla Girls. This is one of the posters that they did. Of course, the only pictures you'll ever see of The Grilla Girls are behind their gorilla masks. So we won't tell you who they are. And then we transition to women with a camera. We start to see the camera get smaller, get lighter, get easier to operate. And in fact, Kodak directs its advertising campaign to women, to homemakers, to young women. And there's a real resurgence of photographic practice that, of course, we see to this day. These are the different Kodak cameras, circa 1893, 1895, 1900. And there's Kodak's logo in the lap of the woman at the right. See how easy it is? This is one of our favorite pictures. So this is a cross-cultural encounter where the photographer has shared her camera with her subject. Who seems to be interested in taking the picture but is a little unclear about how to actually do it. We would love to be able to say this is Margaret Mead, but it isn't. We don't know. And then we come to Queen Victoria, who was a really important person in the history of photography. Who would have thunk? In addition to ruling the world, she became an avid practitioner. There was a dark room at Buckingham Palace. She created scrapbooks of family events. I've been fortunate enough to see some of them. Stag huns, birthday parties. The fact that she's posing with family photographs on the table next to her. When her husband died after Prince Albert's death, she wore a DeGarrion bracelet, a memorial bracelet, for the rest of her life, honoring him and just showing her, her citizenry, the relationship she had to photography. She championed it, she practiced it. She made it popular, she made it fun. And we're looking for one of her family albums if you happen to have one. So this is Fanny Fern. She was a writer and she was the first woman to have her own column in 1852. And she was so good at it that by 1855 she was the highest paid writer in the United States. And she coined the expression, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Among many other wonderful clips. Here's Gertrude Stein, a photograph that we actually can attribute to Carl Van Vechten, who was a very important photographer of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s, knew everybody. This is actually Stein in France. And Van Vechten got to travel around as well. And of course she was daring in her use of the English language. She really opened up literature and through her own salons champion, not only literature but the visual arts. She and her brother had a huge art collection. So she was really daring in many ways in her personal life, in her career life. And here's, you know, who knows what she's writing, you know? That's how, you know, who knows what she's writing. It's so great. It's the vernacular counterpart. It's kind of like there's Gertrude Stein and there's the woman in her kitchen. And she may have turned out to be... Who knows? Now this is a great segue. I just want you to notice this. We go from the arts to entertainment. Okay, here's this woman writer in her kitchen. And here's the Presbyterian kitchen band. And they really are playing pots and pans that are creatively reconfigured. Samson and Delilah? Samson's the one with the hair. So all we know is her name is Delilah and is it really Delilah? We don't really know. But she, you know, she was a circus performer and clearly had a lovely relationship with her pet lion. And here's a more recent version of that. Not so recent, but... This is Marie Rasmussen who was associated with Ringling Brothers Circus in the 1930s. You'll see that this is an actual performance. They are people in the bandstand. If you look at the picture carefully, she's wearing a leopard scarf. Which is a subtle threat, you know? You guys behave. It's a real photo postcard of a sharpshooter. The photographic techniques include pictures large and small. Real photo postcards were introduced in the early 20th century. And guess what? You got to send your picture through the mail and we have a bunch of those with identifying features. And this is Calamity Jane. Her name was Martha Jane Canary. And she was born in Missouri. And this is... We didn't write this, but... This hard drinking woman wore men's clothing, used their body language, chewed tobacco, and was handy with the gun, I would say to say the least. She participated in the Gold Rush. There's a wonderful book of Calamity Jane's letters to her daughter. So I urge you to look into that. This is Mabel Strickland on Stranger. And she was a rodeo rider, obviously. There's a movie about... Oh, Calam... Oh, absolutely. Actually, that was the first movie I ever saw, which was prophetic. I was three years old. My father took me to the circus, terrified of the clowns. And I was shrieking, and he took me out, and then we went to this movie. And it was just a real memorable first milestone in my life. And who knew? That's Mabel Strickland again. Trick rider. So you can also wear heels on a horse. But there's our favorite. Georgia Sweet. She, again, was associated with... Ringling. Ringling Brothers Circus. She makes it look so easy. Mrs. Fanny Gorman, who was a strong woman. Somehow she lost her neck during her career. She was compressing it. I love this photo because of its depiction of family values. Can we say she supports your family? Now, we don't know anything about this, except she was a female escape artist. She's being tied up and tossed into the water. I don't know. I guess she got out of it. She looks a little suspect in that picture. And here's another water. Yes, here's an entertainer, early entertainer. Of course, she's smoking, which was also a no-no. And she's dressed sort of in circus regalia, but also a little cross-dressy. And apparently that was a big vaudeville thing, is for women to perform as men. Which is ironic, because the women's parts in early theater were played by men. So here's a visual history of the bathing suit. No high heels. This is one of my favorite pictures. It's a can-can photo. Again, small picture from the 1920s. Snapshot just really captures the outlandishness of that dance. A Ouija photo of a stripper after Ouija left New York in Crime Sceneville. He went out to Hollywood and got into theatrical photography. And this is a snapshot that somebody took at a family gathering. And here's the guest artiste, belly dancer. And of course, until very recently, belly dancing is having a big resurgence right now. And I have to say that at the age of 62, I started taking belly dance lessons. But here it was still a little on the risque side. Here we have nothing to say about her, really. She speaks for herself. She definitely speaks for herself. So this is our segue into, you know, we can call them bad girls or girls with an attitude. She's got to run in her stockings, so she's got a bad attitude. Now, we love this picture. I mean, is she bad? Of course she's not bad. But it's so about daring and the attitude of what? I mean, I love this picture, and I really don't even know what to say about it. Now, she is bad because she is smoking in the garden while everybody's supposed to be serving dinner. And they're smoking too. I don't know if you can read that sign, but it says no smoking or talking. She's smoking a fox of cigars, which is still a no-no. And here's the bad girl of all bad girls. Maywest. And she really was. I mean, she really, she was tough and she was really smart and she really ran her own career. And she did what she felt was right no matter what. That's because she was from Brooklyn. Here's a little dialogue going on. I don't know if it came to anything. Now, this is a little series that we have here, and of course they're not bad girls, and their attitude is not bad, but this little series is of women who are really owning their sexuality. Really owning it and displaying it and feeling really comfortable about it. These are not porno. These were not paid models. These were not done to, you know, to turn on men. This is clearly for her partner in the privacy of her own bedroom. And here's another one. I love this picture. She is happy. Can you all read that, what it says? Irma the body. She says, we back our men in Vietnam. Your good neighbor policy in action. Now these women were paid for sex. These are prostitutes in the red light district in Holland, Amsterdam. Come up and see me sometime. Disturbed, Lake Huntington, New York. Yeah, they're peeing. They're peeing. And this woman is undressing, getting into the bath, and then on the toilet. It's a French kind of lartique representation. Really just so intimate. It's like, can you take our picture? Bad girl. You are such a bad girl. No, these are American. Again, amateur pictures. Caught in the act. Now, here we have a series of what we think are lesbian, well, depictions. We don't know if they're relationships or whatever. It's odd, you don't see pictures like this. And you don't see pictures like this either. We worked really hard finding these pictures. Jitterbugging. Here's a double wedding. United we stand, divided we fall. Now these, this is another segue. These are cross-dressers. Again, we don't know who they are or what their motive was, except that this was dangerous to do in public. So sometimes it's theatrically related. Clearly some of these are performers. Probably college. Costume party. And some of them aren't. Cool Palm Beach. And here we go from the sublime. This is poker Alice. This is also a Deadwood celebrity. Lived in Deadwood at the same time as Calamity Jane. We're now in a new area of the collection, criminals. She was a gambler, a bootlegger. She was an atom. And apparently as a young woman, she was renowned for her beauty. We don't know who she is. It's Austin, Texas, but that's all we know. This is Squeaky Frong. Oh, this is so bizarre. I didn't know neither one of us knew much about her life, but as a young girl, she was a performer for a popular local dance group called the Westchester Lariat, which in the late 1950s toured the U.S. and Europe and appeared on the Lawrence Welk show and at the White House. From then, she sort of fell into bad company, as it were, and drugs and so on. Took up with Charles Manson. She was not involved in the Tate murders, although she was arrested and imprisoned afterwards for protesting, you know, Manson's jailing and so on. But those were very minor charges. But then she went on to attempt to assassinate President Ford and was sent to prison for life where she still is. I don't know if you remember, those of you who can remember, there were two assassination attempts on President Ford in 17 days. Hers was the first. They had nothing to do with this. Neither did she. Well, the caption to this picture is actually kind of interesting. This is Rose Lamagna, who is in prison, darning the socks of her, or darning the clothes of her 10 children while awaiting trial for the murder of her husband. Yeah. Here she is. Yes, okay. So this is Sarah Jean Moore, the second person to attempt to assassinate President Ford. She wasn't very popular with women somehow. She was an FBI informer. Who worked for one of the members of the Hearst family. Her story is as convoluted and crazy as it gets. And she is still in prison. No, she was part, she got out. She served 32 years though, okay. This is Emmy Montague Harris, one of the co-founders of the Symbionnes Liberation Army. Right. So they were behind the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and they also, she also served in jail. They, you know, they killed people essentially. They robbed banks and they killed people. And here's Patty herself who was, of course, kidnapped by the Army and then became a member and spent two years in jail as a result of her activities and associations. And she was given pardon by Bill Clinton. Actually, her sentence was first commuted by Jimmy Carter and then she was completely forgiven by Bill Clinton. So as you can see, the collection includes ephemera as well as original photographs because who wouldn't want a wanted poster? An original. Patty once hung in the post office near you. So these are Algerian freedom fighters, as they would call themselves. This is a Soviet freedom fighter. A partisan milking her cow. I love that picture. An anarchist ready to throw a hand grenade. And what's interesting here is are these freedom fighters or are they terrorists? If you had asked them, they would consider themselves warriors for a cause, I'm sure. So the pictures really depend on, you know, the interpretation depends on who's looking and who's writing the history. Yeah, this is a postcard. So that is heavily inscribed on the front and the back. And even the depiction of this young woman is somewhat compromised because here she is, an anarchist with an off-the-shoulder blouse and kind of this very traditional depiction of femininity. So now these are what we would call warriors. These are all military women. This is Pauline Cushman who was a union spy, transitioned from being an actress to working for the Union Army. She went through the entire war without ever having been discovered to be a woman. Patriotic figure from the First World War. This is the First World War II also. This is what they call the Negro troops in World War II. They're at ease here, as you can see. And they're at some sort of basic training camp. These are not at ease. This is their first review. Yeah, their first review. And this is very current. This is a young woman in Iraq. Now we get to women with a cause. And this is a photograph of a painting. Some of the women in our collection are pre-photographic. So the painting becomes the record by which we recognize the figure who was in this case Elizabeth Gurney Fry, the angel of Newgate Prism, a social reformer in the UK in the 1830s, 40s. She was a Quaker, an American, and went to England and worked on prison reform. And Quakers usually don't act large. Their due-goodness is usually in small circles. She is just about the most famous Quaker who had a large impact in the world around her. She was a prison reformer and she set up half... In the prison she did all this stuff for women in terms of childcare and education and so on. She also set up this whole series of half-way houses for women who were trying to come out. And she called them the Newgate Association. And then they sprang up in prisons all over the United States and in Britain. Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to say one other thing because she was very influential to Florence Nightingale. And then here's Isabella Bumfrey, Sojourner Truth, who again, very active supporter of women's rights, equal rights, and abolitionist movement. And how did she support herself by selling this carte de visite, this photograph that was available at the lectures that she gave around the country and probably in Europe too. I sell the shadow to support the substance. The shadow being the photographic image. And these are women's rights. They're wearing sashes. Oh, no, I'm sorry. These are temperance. Yeah, temperance. The one on the left, it's hard to read, but it says how dry I am. And these are more reformers. Isabella Somerset, Francis Willard, very active in the temperance movement. These were minor royalty in England too. They were duchesses. And there's Mrs. Woodhull, sister of Tanny Cleflin. She was the first female candidate for president in the 1860s. And these little cards, these business cards that people gave one another, were a form of portraiture for everybody known as carte de visite. Hers, of course, is stamped with her vocation. Broker. Spiritualist, also proponent of free love. Susan B. Anthony, who was photographed by Seroni in New York City. These are a group of suffragettes in England being arrested by Bobbys. And in my research I discovered that there was a difference between suffragists and suffragettes. And it's interesting because suffragette sounds a little diminutive and, you know, like it's not as important as a suffragist. But the suffragists were very moral, very calm, very reasoned thinkers. And the suffragettes were very impatient for social change. And they believed in protest, civil disobedience, they broke the law, they were not opposed to violence in the name of the cause. And the headline on this newspaper says we did it. So here we see another suffrage-related image. There's Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls commemorative. This is great, this is a union parade. And if you look at it really carefully, they're all holding umbrellas and they're placed in such a way as that the umbrellas create an American flag. The stars are in the upper right. And we were able to read the billboard on the back that indicated it wasn't a suffrage parade, it was a union parade. Here's Jane Adams, founder of Whole House in Chicago. A very important pacifist went with Henry Ford to try to stop the First World War involved in immigrant rights. First President of the Ladies Guild of Peace and Freedom and one of the very first women to win a Nobel Peace Prize. These are the first women in Parliament in the UK. This is what, 1920? Eleanor Roosevelt at Plymouth Rock. Which they had a chain down because they were afraid somebody was going to take the rock. Do you see that? So we all know about Eleanor, but she was called the First Lady of the World. She was the first First Lady who had her own agenda. And for decades after her husband died, she continued doing her own work for peace, freedom, equality, the rights of the poor. Women's rights? Definitely women's rights. I love this. This is Helen Keller at her Braille typewriter. And we couldn't decide, I mean, do we put her in the arts? Where do we put her? But she was definitely a woman with a cause. I don't know how she, you know, I mean, she traveled around the world. She definitely was a supporter of people with disabilities, but she also worked for peace and freedom and justice. She was a radical. She was not a liberal. She was a radical. And was really out there. She was actually an anarchist. And it's funny because she was, I guess because of her so-called disabilities, she was never called to task for it. But it's shocking the things that she has written and said. It's hard to believe. And this is an unknown peace protester. This is from, we were able to get some of the old press pictures from an old neighborhood newspaper in Green Point, New York. And this is a local protest against the incinerator in Green Point. This is the Million Youth March, photo by Azim Thomas, Bella Abzug for Congress. That's Barbara Streisand behind her. Diane Feinstein, who did win the mayoral race and her career is marked by many firsts. Yeah, she was the first female president of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, San Francisco's first female mayor, the first woman to serve in the Senate from California, one of two female Jewish senators, both from California, first woman to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, first woman to chair the Senate Rules Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. And maybe we'll be the first you know what. There's Shirley Chisholm. She was Congresswoman for seven terms. She also ran for president of the United States and received 152 first ballot votes at the 1972 convention. And isn't that... And here we all know this is Princess Diana of Wales, who really it would have been fascinated to see how she would have matured because she certainly was going in the right direction in terms of a woman with a cause, or many causes. Seems to be in New York City. Maybe. And here our final image is of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman. And what we discovered is that Wonder Woman is of course an Amazon. Read this whole thing, it's really good. The all-female tribe of Amazons and was sent to the man's world as an ambassador. Among the Amazons she is known as Princess Diana, being the daughter of the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. But in the man's world she takes on the secret identity of Diana Prince. Her powers include super strength, hand-to-hand combat, and flight. She also makes use of her lasso of truth, which forces those bound by it to tell the truth. A pair of bullet-deflecting bracelets and an invisible plane. So on that note, we thank you and... And I'd just like to add a note of, you know, where do we go from here? And I would like to say look around, because the whole world is in our hands. I think we have time for a few questions. Are there two or three that anybody would like to ask? Yes, in the back, please. Thank you. Also, let's not forget... Dara Bernbaum, of course, has done the infamous Wonder Woman, which was one of the very first videos that was ever done as video art. And women have not been really recognized for their very early work in videos, a medium for art. And our next exhibition actually that's going to be coming up here is going to be on women's video. And so will Wonder Woman be available. Yes, there was another question. Yes, Christina? Good. So thank you all. I apologize again for those of you who couldn't get seats. And I would like to go over one more time the schedule for the coming month, because March, in addition to being our second anniversary, is also Women's History Month. And next weekend, actually, Faye Waddleton is coming and she's a woman's rights activist and president of the Center for the Advancement of Women, and she's going to be talking on feminist issues. First Saturday, we have Diane Volkstein coming and the Young Voices Talk for Younger Women and Gallery Talk by Nicole Caruth, who was a co-curator of Burning Down the House, which is up now. I hope you've had a chance to see it. We're going to have on the 14th the Feminist Archaeology by Ellen Belcher and Diana Craig Patch. And then on the 15th, Rusty Kanakogi, I can never say her name correctly, and she's fabulous. She's the mother of women's judo, and she will be here to speak about her trailblazing entry into the competitive world of judo. She disguised herself as a man and she actually won an Olympic medal, which was stripped from her at the point that the Olympic Committee discovered that she was a woman. But she really opened the doors in the Olympics for women to enter in. So I would encourage you to hear her. She's quite marvelous and she hasn't been well lately. So the fact that she's coming with a PowerPoint is part of what's keeping her alive at the moment, and it will be really an unusual opportunity to hear from this incredible octogenarian trailblazer. And then I hope you will join us for the second anniversary, which is going to be March 21st. It's going to be by extension downstairs in the auditorium. And about a year and a half ago, I put together a think tank that we titled Unfinished Business, and we're a core group of women, intergenerational and diverse, identifying ways of mobilizing external networks and raising public awareness about intergenerational communications and issues, of course, of race, class, gender, and the effects of current events on women and children. And we're calling it a speak out because that is what it's going to be. It's a vision for the nation, what's it going to take? It's going to be moderated by a very fantastic Laura Flanders, who you may know from Grit TV. Nicole Mason, who is Women of Color Policy Network, is going to be doing our keynote. Anna Oliveri, who's a New York Women's Foundation, and Ai-jen Poo from Domestic Workers United are going to be our respondents. Tony Blackman, who is from Brooklyn, is going to be doing a performance and closing remarks by Liz Abzug, daughter, of course, of our great Bella Abzug. And those who have been involved with Unfinished Business include Liz Abzug, Sharna Goldsecker, Sarah Gould, Ms. Foundation, Mia Herndon, Third Wave Foundation, Carol Jenkins, the Women's Media Foundation, and Monique Metta, who was an independent consultant at this point. Benita Miller, she's from the Brooklyn Young Mothers Collective, and Amy Sandinman from here, Brooklyn Groundswell Community Mural Project. We will be having a reception here in the center afterwards and also be doing a group mural, which will be sponsored by Groundswell after that. And then we have the following day, AAR, Kat Griffin and Ferris Olin, who many of you are sure are familiar with, are going to be moderating a panel, the Market Women Artists from Collection to Cultural Records. Strategies, excuse me, which would ensure women artists are placed in the cultural record. Panelists include Deborah Harris, Claire Oliver, Sue Scott, and Deep Chana Klein. And if you haven't had enough, by that time our month ends on the 28th with a symposium, and it is Feminism Now, New Feminist Art Scholarship, and we will be highlighting the work for an entire day on Saturday the 28th of emerging graduate and postgraduate students and scholars, who will be presenting their groundbreaking research on a wide array, obviously, of issues. And it will be moderated by the wonderful Carrie Lovelace, so I hope you can join us. And I want to thank the two of you, because this was absolutely fantastic and inspirational. It was really wonderful. And thank you very much. It was exciting on so many levels, historic, visual, I think it really gives all of us a great deal of enthusiasm to forge ahead. And I thank all of you for coming and making it such a wonderful presentation as well. Thank you very much.