Video
Visitor Center Virtual Tour (Audio Described)
Transcript
Welcome to the Women’s Rights National Historic Park Visitor Center
The visitor center is a three-story building. This audio description utilizes the hours on a clock to provide directional information. 12 o’clock represents the area at the screen's top and center. Nine o’clock represents the middle of the left side. All of the windows in this building are floor-to-ceiling. The front door is in the middle of the building, and it is recessed. Across the top of the alcove to the front door is a banner that says “Women’s Rights National Historical Park Commemorating 100 years Votes for Women”. Above the alcove, there is an engraved stone that spans the width of the alcove that reads “Women’s Rights National Historical Park Visitor Center.”
In front of the building are two park benches with a burned message on the bench back that reads “Women’s Rights National Historical Park.” They are located on either side of the entrance in front of the building.
The building is set back from the street. A wide sidewalk is made of large gray, blue, and cream pavers.
Inside the visitor center is the Information booth that is located in the center of the space at around at one o’clock. In addition to the information booth, this area serves as a gift shop with merchandise along the shelves from about 2 to six o’clock. The walls are painted a museum white, and the carpeting is a neutral color.
The orientation room is on the ground floor and looks out to the street. The room has benches, a podium, a round wooden table with matching chairs, and a wall mural created by local artist Brian Chamberlain. Chamberlain said the murals in this room were intended to pay homage to the planning and execution of the Seneca Falls Convention. Within eleven days in July 1848, the remarkable women portrayed conceived, planned, and conducted the first ever convention held for the sole purpose of discussing women’s rights. As well as the portraits of key players, Chamberlain included imagery which represents the planning of the convention and its central document, ‘The Declaration of Sentiments.’ He used a bright color palette and a contemporary style in which to paint these murals, in order to give the events a fresh take.”
On the wall where the windows are located is a small wall graphic of a round table with the following words written above it, “When in the course of human events”.
The gift shop has a variety of memorabilia including books, stuffed animals, water bottles, coffee mugs tee shirts, caps, sweatshirts, and cloth totes.
The information center has an expansive bronze sculpture of 20 people, including the planners and some attendees to the convention. The sculpture was created by Lloyd Lillie, Professor Emeritus, Boston University, and two assistants, Victoria Guerina and Hilary Hutchinson, they used clay to create the sculptures and photographs and live models were used to create the movement, facial expressions, and size of the statues. In a foundry owned and operated by a woman, the figures were cast in bronze.
The 20-person sculpture is broken into several groupings and is located behind the information desk.
Among the people represented in the sculpture are Mary Ann and Thomas M’Clintock, Lucretia and James Mott, Jane and Richard Hunt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Martha Coffin Wright, and eleven “anonymous” participants who represent the men and women who attended the Convention but did not sign the “Declaration of Sentiments.”
At six o’clock there is a pedestal display of a gift that President Barack Obama delivered on August 22, 2013. In the glass casing there is a copy of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act as well as the remarks he made when he signed the laws. Both documents are on Lucite book holders that allow the documents to displayed in an open book format. In front of the two documents in the display case is a picture of the event.
On this gallery wall there are four pieces of quilt art made by New York Artist Alice Gant. Gant’s quilts feature a technique that she invented called neo-reverse appliqué, which enables her to draw with cloth.
The first quilt has a woman with a basket filled with flowers reaching up with her left hand to gather more flowers.
At the top of the next quilt written in script are the words: With Gentle persuasion, Lucretia Mott told those in authority, “ they had better think again,”
The quilt consists of a dinner scene of three men seated at a table and a woman standing in front of them holding a China teapot. On the wall behind one of the men is a picture with the words “Seek truth for authority not authority for truth.
The third quilt is done in bright red and black. The background of the quilt is red and there is a silhouette of a woman with her head tilted skyward and her hands reaching up.
The fourth quilt has silhouettes of four women, two adults, and two young women. They are marching. Behind them are banners in lavender, white and gold- the National Woman’s Party used this combination of colors.
On the east wall of the Visitor Center, opposite the quilt display, is the Women’s Wall. It runs from the back of the first floor and up the stairs to the second-floor exhibits.
Each of the pictures, artifacts, cartoons, and banners on the Women’s Wall, tells the story of a woman who might not have been heard in her lifetime, either publicly or privately. Together they celebrate the richness and diversity of women’s experiences and show that women’s contributions to the creation of this country and society, though sometimes unrecognized, have been and are essential.
The wall collage has life size cardboard cutouts that are blended with oversized historical photographs in black and white and some in color. The collage fills most of the wall, with just a few spaces where the wall peeks through
Some of the images include a cutout of a woman in a graduation cap and gown A woman holding a sign that says Stop Discrimination because of SEX. A cutout of a woman in a black dressy dress holding a rifle over one shoulder and holding her trophy animal by its feet as it dangles to the floor.
Several of the artwork on the women’s wall are examples of women excelling in male-dominated fields and pursuits. There is an image of Kathy Phibbs, and Nancy Czech on Mount Stuart, Washington State, which illustrates how much role models matter to women seeking to reach new heights.
Phibbs, a prominent climbing and mountaineering teacher for women’s wilderness organizations, organized and led a climb of Mount Rainer in 1990, honoring the first ascent by a woman, Fay Fuller, in 1890. She and a companion perished in a climbing accident in the Cascades in January 1991. Nancy Czech also died in an accident. (Courtesy of Ruth Nielson/Woodswomen)
The collage goes up the wall next to the stairs to the second floor. This staircase has six wide steps going up to a landing and then about 12 more steps to the second floor. There is signage along the railing of the staircase providing information on the locations of various exhibits.
On the wall is a large quilt in a Quality Star pattern. The background is white and the elements of the star are white, shades of purple and green. On the adjacent wall is a plaque that reads:
”The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the park of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.”
-Declaration of Sentiments 1848
When the framers of the Declaration of Sentiments borrowed these words from the Declaration of Independence, they claimed that men tried to control women as King George once tried to control the colonies. They knew that most Americans still lacked the rights of life, liberty, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, sixty years after the Revolutionary War. Like many others, Elizabeth Cady Stanton devoted her life to advancing the truth that all men and women are created equal and deserve equal rights.
The signers of the Declaration of Sentiments expected “no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule” in their attempts to gain equal rights for women. Some of these exhibits describe the 1848 Convention. Others Explore the significance of the women’s right’s movement in the past and present. They all ask the questions, “What are rights? How do we get them? Who defended them? Who decides who gets them?”
The first exhibit after climbing the stairs is true womanhood. It is illustrated with a popular image from the 19th century called “The Light of The Home.” The exhibit juxtaposes advice literature of the time, with pictures and quotations from women’s actual lived experiences in order to show how the “ideal” social roles of the men and women in the 19th century, were different from the reality—especially those who did not fit the white, Christian, leisure-class stereotype.
In the display of the True Womanhood at 10 o’clock there is a book display with two open books…one oversized and one more traditionally sized. They are positioned on a Lucite book holder. In front of the book on a narrow horizontal metal strip are the words, “Religious tradition and advice literature provided guidelines for keep home, caring for husbands, and raising children. Next to the books is a display that reads The True Woman “The true woman worked in her home, her authority as mistress and homemaker symbolized by keys and broom. In addition to the physical labor needed to care for her husband and children, she also provided refuge from the workplace and moral training for the young. Her position depended on her husband’s wage-earning ability and on her ability to bear and rear children and manage her home.
Next to the information display is a child’s wooden highchair with a spoon and cup on the tray, Next to the highchair is a side able with a drawer. On top of it is a sewing basket, a book and other examples of daily life. The walls contain black and white photos of women with young children,.
In front of the wall running from one to three o’clock is an information display with four pictures.
A statue of Sojourner Truth, born enslaved in New York, and one of the most powerful antislavery and women’s rights speakers, embodies the exclusion of many women from the cult of “True Womanhood.” In her famous speech in 1851 at a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio she pointed out that this idea of womanhood excluded the real experience of most women.
This area is called the Inauguration of a rebellion. It presents basic information about the organizers of the 1848 convention, some of the attendees and what the convention was about. It explains how Seneca Falls was linked to activists and reformers in other areas, and how those friendships, especially between women in the abolition and women’s rights movements, shaped the changes.
This display focuses on the Rochester Women’s Rights Convention. IT consists of five oversized information boards that have sepia tone photographs with copy blocks super imposed over the photos.
Rochester Women’s Rights Convention: On August 2nd, 1848, two weeks after the Seneca Falls Convention, a similar Convention was held in the Unitarian Church I Rochester, New York. Emboldened by the conversations in Seneca Falls, the speakers at the Rochester Convention dared to expand their challenges to women’s oppression. The Rochester Convention was presided over by a woman—Abigail Bush—shocking even the likes of Lucretia Mott ad Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Rochester convention also sought to expand the conversation begun in Seneca Falls to include working women, and women of color. Though the two meetings were held only two weeks apart and had many of the same attendees, the resolutions reached at the end of each were very different. Seneca Falls on the left panel, Rochester on the right panel.
Haudenosaunee Confederacy: Leading the Way to Women’s Rights
The women’s Rights movement was born in the territory of the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois) in 1848. In the six nations of the Haudenosaunee women lived with authority and respect in a society that balanced equality between men and women. White European suffragist saw from this example that women’s rights were a lived reality, not just a dream. These four panels show the ways that the indigenous communities inspired suffragists in the 19th century in the area to re-examine family structure, clothing, work, legal rights, and political influence to be more equal for women.
A Bronze sculpture of a handshake is on a table positioned in front of the railing overlooking the open space to the ground floor. The bronze life castings is of a handshake between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, created later in their lives as a symbol of their enduring friendship and collaboration in the struggle for women’s right. Next to the display of the handshake is a design model for the Visitor Center complex as it was originally constructed in 1993.
These exhibits demonstrate the close relationship between access to paid labor and wages, and women’s rights. Although women have always worked, whether for family or for wages, they have historically been paid less for their work than men—or not paid at all). Other factors such as race, class, and stereotype, have affected women’s work options. Women and men have worked hard since the 19th century to change the status and pay of women’s work.
Title: A Woman’s Work is Never Done
This exhibit shows the various types and areas of household labor. Family care work is part of the hidden national economy. It is not included in that measure of national productivity, the Gross National Product, but it must be done to keep workers on the job. Someone has to feed, clothe, house, teach, and care for families.
Women of Rochester. This dress is a textile project showcasing the many contributions of remarkable women with connections to Rochester, NY. The body of the dress incorporates the names of over 100 women including the creators. The panels highlight a broad diversity of fields with national and international impact.
This section illustrates that historically and currently women and men function with societal expectation for behavior, dress, abilities, and action. Today it may be a little more difficult to tell someone’s social class or cultural background by what she wears, but choosing fashion is still complicated by media and societal messages about how women and men should look, act, feel, and think.
A Glass enclosed exhibit of typical clothing from the 19th Century has a blown-up advertisement that reads THE ONLY AUTHORITY ON FASHION FRANK LESLIE’s. The display has a mannequin dressed in a long shiny brown dress. In addition to the mannequin, there are samples of women’s underwear, including corsets.
During the 19th century, clothing indicated social status and cultural background. White, middle-class, and wealthy women wore corsets, bustles, and hoop skirts that got in the way while walking and working and often endangered their health. Women who worked on farms or in factories only had this clothing for special occasions.
Elizabeth Smith Miller and her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton rebelled against fashion by wearing loose-fitting short dresses over pantaloons. They introduced this outfit to Amelia Bloomer, who [popularized it through her newspaper, The Lily. The still-modest, more comfortable “bloomer costume” symbolized middle-class women’s desire for freedom. Freedom of movement and political and economic freedom.
This exhibit examines the scope and scale of the cosmetics industry and its relationship to image standards for women and men. Cosmetics have always been used to alter a person’s natural appearance. In 1870 beauty aids were aggressively advertised and encouraged women to conform to the beauty ideals of that time.
This is a table display protected by a glass casing. It has a 19th-century clothes iron (made of actual iron) and a 19th-century fashion magazine on the left. To the right is a modern-day iron, a fashion magazine from the 1980s, as well an old-fashioned small sewing machine. A small sign in the middle asks, “Are things different today?”
This display of stereotypes asks people to think about how toys communicate and reinforce stereotypes about gender. The glass-enclosed display has four shelves of children’s toys ranging from GI Joe and a doctor’s medicine kit with a black bag, a nurse’s medicine kit with a pink bag, a sewing machine, and an oven. Next to the toy cabinet is a crayon-colored display of a girl and boy with the handwritten headline: A stereotype is Born. The display lists stereotypes such as “Boys don’t play with dolls” and “Be nice and quiet like a good girl.”
This exhibit is called Campaigning Women. It shows the range of political issues with which women have been involved, from property rights to Temperance, from Abolition to the Equal Rights Amendment.
There is an information kiosk at around 8 o'clock that is on an elevated platform. Half of the kiosk is in orange with white lettering, and the other half has a black and white photo of two women. The elevated platform has multiple displays of women picketing for the right to vote.
This exhibit (Fighting the Good Fight) focuses on Civil Rights, starting with one of the earliest movements- the anti-lynching campaign led by Ida B. Wells.
There is an elevated platform in the center of this exhibit with an information display that contains photos from the 1960s and 70s. In one of the central photos on the platform, there is a woman marching with the sign which says “Dismember Patriarchy”
Behind the platform is a free-standing display featuring women marching with signs that say “ERA YES, FREEDOM NOW CORE” and a sign that says “Keep your laws off my body.”
Two large, framed pages are hanging from a beige wall. The headline on the page on the left reads “Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Underground Railroad,” which describes the Stantons’ work as abolitionists and the friends they had who supported the Underground Railroad. The last panel (In defense of Woman and the Slave…) describes the work of Abbey Kelly. The page is copy-heavy with three photos and two graphics. The page on the right side reads “ In Defense of Woman and the Slave.
This is a freestanding wall exhibit. On the left side are the words School Matters. There is a block of copy on an orange rectangle part of the display. The rest of the display is black with a montage of black and white photos and a three-sepia portrait of women. There is a secondary headline that reads, “The girls jump rope. The boys play ball.”
In the early 19th century, the first seminaries for girls were established. By 1848, institutions of higher learning were still closed to women. This section explores the meaning of educational equality, shows how education can either support or challenge women’s traditional roles, examines efforts to bring about educational equality in physical education, and illustrates the educational experiences of a variety of women through quotations, pictures, and artifacts.
The image on the left is part of the “Fighting the Good Fight” exhibit. These are demonstrators from a garment workers’ labor union.
Only one woman who signed the Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 would live long enough to cast a legal ballot. Catherine Blaine, just 18 years old at the Convention's time, moved west to the Washington Territory and would eventually be able to vote in 1884.
Radical Optimism features an overview of generations of women who dedicated themselves to the struggle for women’s voting rights. Spanning more than 80 years—from the first female public speakers to the vote that changed the future for American women—the exhibit brings viewers through the challenges and obstacles facing the suffragists, even those from within their own movement. It explores how they remained motivated, hopeful, and steadfast through years of frustration, conflict, and division.
To dispel the commonly believed myth that higher education damaged women’s health, the first women’s colleges included exercise programs. Although their participation remained limited, by the 1920s enough women had training in physical education to play professional golf, baseball, and tennis. In 2022, more than 110,000 women will compete in intercollegiate sports, accounting for 37 percent of college varsity athletes. Women can also compete professionally in soccer, ice hockey, football, fastpitch softball, and other team sports.
Description
Audio Described video of the 3D tour of the Women's Rights National Historical Park Visitor Center. Accompanies the Matterport 3D tour function.
Duration
19 minutes, 45 seconds
Date Created
03/28/2023
Copyright and Usage Info