Ralph Appelbaum Associates

Women’s Voices, Women’s Votes, and Women’s Rights celebrates the 100 year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and the 25th anniversary of the keynote speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing by then First Lady Hillary Clinton in which she proclaimed that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

Uniquely and engagingly portrayed, the exhibition challenges and corrects historical narratives about who and what suffragists were. Utilizing art quilts as part of a historical roadmap, the exhibit chronicles a diverse group of women across time and space and speaks soundly to their struggles and victories. A succession of tall, angular panels feature ten founding mothers, social justice activists, and American and international political leaders, all change agents who attempted to shatter glass ceilings.

The exhibition tells this complex story by focusing on three distinct movements: the American suffrage movement, the campaign for voting rights, and the global movement for women’s human rights.

Tracing the history of American women’s battle for the vote and ending with today’s global efforts to secure women’s human rights, the exhibit recounted the struggle to adopt the 19th Amendment, pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and mount a global movement for women’s equality around the world. The exhibition also highlights women fighting to protect and expand human rights.