(NEW YORK, MARCH 23, 2015)—The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College announced today that it will extend through May 27 its current exhibit of treasures and relics from the women’s suffrage movement, Women Take The Lead: Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Eleanor Roosevelt, Suffrage to Human Rights. The show has attracted more than 2,500 visitors since its opening on January 14, among them students, tourists, individuals, and numerous tour groups. The exhibition is made possible by a grant from Elbrun and Peter Kimmelman.
The show brings together 75 rare original posters, broadsides, pamphlets, books, images, and manuscripts that were produced and used in the early 20th century to promote long-denied voting rights for women. The exhibit’s signature 22 advocacy posters were generated especially for the 1912 presidential campaign, during which the right of women to vote stirred a heated debate (although the constitutional amendment extending suffrage was not passed until 1920). Additional materials trace the evolution of Eleanor Roosevelt’s political and public life—which suffrage made possible—and the many outstanding women she knew, including Amelia Earhart, Marian Anderson, Pearl S. Buck, and Frances Perkins.
Announcement of the extension was made today by Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab as she hosted a women’s tour and breakfast at the Roosevelt House exhibit this morning.
“This is the perfect time—Women’s History Month—and, and of course, the perfect place—Eleanor’s home—to reveal our plans to extend this acclaimed show through the end of the spring semester,” Ms. Raab said. “We have been delighted by the media coverage and public response to this, the first special exhibit in the history of Roosevelt House. And we want to make sure that our students, teachers, and visitors get all the time they need to explore this material. We also believe that the show is particularly relevant during this season of presidential primaries, for many of the posters on view in the exhibit were generated by women insisting on the right to vote in primaries more than 100 years ago. As Eleanor Roosevelt believed, human rights would always be incomplete without equal rights and full legal protection for all women everywhere, a goal that continues to elude and challenge us globally today.”
Added Harold Holzer, the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Roosevelt House: “The succinct, ingenious messages which the activists of the last century printed in quick succession for the posters that adorn our show may be called the ‘tweets’ of their day—because they are just as innovative, just as pithy, and just as edgy and thought-provoking as some of the tweets that modern candidates and activists produce at a moment’s notice today. The show we are pleased to extend is not only highly beautiful, it is highly relevant.”
The exhibit, which has been covered in the New York Times andForbes Lifestyle, and has been accompanied by a number of Women’s History Month public programs at Roosevelt House, features materials from the Dobkin Family Collection of Feminist History, assembled over a quarter of a century by New York philanthropist Barbara Dobkin. “We are especially grateful to the Dobkin family for consenting so enthusiastically to this extension,” said President Raab. “And of course we reiterate our gratitude to Elbrun Kimmelman, Trustee of the Hunter College Foundation and member of the Roosevelt House Board of Advisors, for her efforts to secure and fund the exhibition.”
Women Take the Lead was curated by Roosevelt House staff historian Dr. Deborah Gardner and designed by Dylan Gauthier. It was installed with the help of Gregory Nolan and the staff of Roosevelt House and the Hunter College Library Special Collections and Archives. At its previous venue, the Glenn Horowitz Gallery, it was curated by Sarah Funke Butler.
The show is free and open to the public Monday-Saturday, 10AM-4 PM, and during all public programs. For more information, and to reserve free Saturday guided tours of historic Roosevelt House, the New York City home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt from 1905 through 1941, visit: www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/tours.