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Women's History

“For 20 years, everyone referred to The Dinner Party as ... ‘vaginas on plates,’” Chicago says. “Nobody called it the history of women in western civilization, which of course, is what it is.”

These Fall Exhibitions Explore the Origins of Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”

Brooklyn Museum and National Museum of Women in the Arts revisit the artist’s celebration of unrecognized women, female body

A voting sign from the 2008 election.

For a Few Decades in the 18th Century, Women and African-Americans Could Vote in New Jersey

Then some politicians got angry

Mary Martin as Maria von Trapp in a publicity photo for The Sound of Music, the musical that debuted on Broadway on this day in 1959.

The Real-Life Story of Maria von Trapp

“The Sound of Music” was based on the true story of her life, but it took a few liberties

In her second book, The Sexes Throughout Nature, Blackwell argued that while male lions are physically larger and stronger, female lions were “more complex in structure and in functions” through their ability to reproduce and feed their young.

The Woman Who Challenged Darwin’s Sexism

How a preacher with no scientific training ended up writing the first feminist critique of Origins

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Date: c. 1870 Albumen silver print

Central Park Has No Monuments Dedicated to Real Women. That’s About to Change

The future site was dedicated during the state’s centennial of women’s suffrage; the State of New York also will build two statues of suffrage leaders

Harriot Hunt was accepted into Harvard Medical school and treated hundreds of patients over her 25-year-career, blazing a trail for future generations of female physicians.

Women Who Shaped History

The Medical Practitioner Who Paved the Way for Women Doctors in America

Harriot Hunt refused to let her gender limit her ambitions—or those of the next generation of physicians

Marie and Pierre Curie in the laboratory.

Three Quirky Facts About Marie Curie

In honor of her 150th birthday, let’s review a few lesser-known pieces of her personal history

"A witch summoning devils" from "The Kingdom of Darkness" by Nathaniel Crouch, 1688.

200 Artifacts of Witchcraft Cast a Spell in Cornell’s “The World Bewitch’d”

The exhibit, full of manuscripts, photographs and posters, highlights the history of witchcraft in Europe

The Mysterious Murder Case That Inspired Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’

At the center of the case was a beautiful young woman named Grace Marks. But was she really responsible for the crime?

The DuSable Museum was originally located in the main floor parlor of this house.

America’s Oldest Museum of Black Culture Started in a Living Room

The DuSable Museum of African American History was founded by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, born on this day in 1915

Kathleen Gilje, Linda Nochlin in Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 2006, oil on linen, 37 x 51 inches.

Linda Nochlin, Pioneering Feminist Art Historian, Has Died

Nochlin is best known for a 1971 essay theorizing that social institutions—and not a lack of talent—held women back in the art world

In July 1955, black children wait to register for school in Lawrence County, Arkansas, as schools desegregate in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education.

How a Psychologist’s Work on Race Identity Helped Overturn School Segregation in 1950s America

Mamie Phipps Clark came up with the oft-cited “doll test” and provided expert testimony in Brown v. Board of Education

Reaching the summit of the Matterhorn made Annie Smith Peck well-known.

Three Things to Know About Pants-Wearing Mountaineer Annie Smith Peck

Peck wasn’t wealthy and her family, who did have money, didn’t approve of her globe-trotting, mountain-climbing, pants-wearing lifestyle

Jemison aboard the space shuttle 'Endeavour' in the Spacelab Japan science module.

This Groundbreaking Astronaut and Star Trek Fan Is Now Working on Interstellar Travel

Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, wants us to look beyond Earth

Rita Hayworth in 'Gilda.'

How Margarita Cansino Became Rita Hayworth

Hayworth navigated identity, ethnicity and transformation throughout her career

The White House kitchen in the 1890s.

How Eleanor Roosevelt and Henrietta Nesbitt Transformed the White House Kitchen

The kitchen was new, but by all accounts it didn’t help the cooking

H. J. Heinz started a condiment empire. His savvy marketing helped.

There Never Were 57 Varieties of Heinz Ketchup

The ‘57’ doesn’t actually refer to anything

A mid-century Band-Aid tin.

Get Stuck on Band-Aid History

Small injuries are a commonplace problem, but before the Band-Aid, protecting papercuts and other such wounds was a huge hassle

The British Navy was a big deal in the 1700s.

Jane Squire and the Longitude Wars

The sixteenth-century debate over how to determine longitude had a lot of participants—and one woman

Pumpkin spice has become completely divorced from pumpkin pie.

Even Colonial Americans Liked Pumpkin Spice

A recipe for pumpkin (or rather, “pompkin”) spice appears in America’s oldest cookbook

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