From Suffrage to the Women’s March, a New Exhibition Celebrates 100 Years of New York Women in Politics
When it comes to women’s rights, New York has always been a hotbed of political activism. That rich history is the basis for “Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics,” a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.
Originally planned to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the state’s women winning the right to vote, which is November 6, the show took on new significance in the wake of the election of President Donald Trump. The city, and indeed the world, took to the streets for the Women’s March following Trump’s inauguration in January and again on International Women’s Day in March.
Following those historic events, the city museum put out a call for donations, asking participants in the New York demonstrations to contribute signs, banners, and other artworks they had made for either occasion. Those signs join historic political ephemera from the museum’s collection in the show, echoing the voices of previous generations in their call for women’s rights.
“Progress is not some linear thing,” said exhibition curator Sarah Seidman, the museum’s curator of social activism, to artnet News at the press preview. Across the past century, “it’s been the same movement, the same challenges, the same issues that people are fighting over.”
Seidman has illustrated this point at the entrance to the show, where photos of the 1917 parades in support of women’s suffrage are displayed alongside images of protestors from this year.
Separated by 100 years, the juxtaposition is striking. Where just a few women, clad in long white dresses and carrying placards, marched in orderly rows a century ago—a truly unusual sight for the era—the crowds clogged the streets this January, a sea of humanity out in support of women’s rights.
The rest of the exhibition is organized chronologically, covering the suffrage movement, the seldom-recognized women working in government in the decades that followed, the women’s liberation movement, and through to present-day activism.
The show also highlights some of the leading figures of the period, from familiar names like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Gloria Steinem to those who have been largely overlooked by history, such as Mary Lilly, who became the first New York City woman elected to office when she won her Assembly race in 1918.