Just in time for the election, Tacoma museum exhibit addresses women’s suffrage movement
With Election Day approaching, the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma is putting on the history exhibit, “Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting.”
The exhibit, originally set to open in April but postponed due to COVID-19, is now showing at the recently reopened museum at 1911 Pacific Ave.
It will be on display from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a..m. to 5 p.m. through Jan. 17. Admission is free for members, $14 for adults, $11 for students and seniors, and free for children younger than five. Social distancing and mask wearing will be observed in the exhibit.
Jessica Spring and Chandler O’Leary, Tacoma writers and artists, created the exhibit. They are the authors of the book, “Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color,” and their artwork is part of the interactive exhibit.
Mary Mikel Stump, director of audience engagement for the museum, is tasked with, among other things, helping to put together the exhibits.
Stump was recently in a Facebook live discussion with the artists where they provided an overview of the exhibit. Stump spoke to The News Tribune about wanting to address the full history of who got the right to vote, especially when many, especially women of color, were denied that right even when it was supposedly extended to everyone.
“We wanted to celebrate women all through history,” Stump said. “We wanted a real diverse history. We wanted to not just talk about Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul, we wanted to talk about who came after that.”
Stump said there was an emphasis to look at how voting access intersected with racist policies and that the artists captured it.
“How redlining and other aspects of controlling, gerrymandering, is all related,” Stump said. “It was their special eye connecting this content to objects in our collection that you might not otherwise make those connections. That was their sort of magic sparkle that I hoped to get through this project and they did not disappoint.”
When it comes to the intersection of art, history and race there is also a connection to protest in Tacoma. In 2015, the Tacoma Action Collective protested the installation “Art AIDS America” at the Tacoma Art Museum.
A theme of that protest was that Black artists were largely shut out of the exhibit despite being disproportionately impacted by the subject of the art.
Stump talked about the history museum’s attempt to reach diverse artists and pointed to how the museum is looking to grapple with issues of inclusion.
Stump said the voting exhibit was different from the exhibit that brought about the previous protest.
“We’re telling history but we’re not telling a specific cultural history. We were very much aware of the complicated nature of doing that. We seek to tell history in an overview rather than dialing down,” Stump said. “To try to conflate what happened at the Tacoma Art Museum with this, I’m not sure that it’s the same.”
Stump said she wanted to tackle some of the less-discussed aspects of the history of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
“The majority of women, not all women suffragists, but the majority of women suffragists were white. I didn’t want to shy away from the fact that many of them were racist in their approach to suffrage in general,” Stump said. “They were products of their time, but there was no doubt about it that they definitely threw many of their other suffragists of color, including Frederick Douglass, a little bit under the bus in order to advance their own concerns. It’s a complicated history and so we sought out authors that we already knew had done a lot of that work.
“There is a lot of really frank discussion in the exhibit itself about that complication of that history.”
According to a news release, the exhibit will be a “game-based exhibition” to simulate the processes of voting in real time.
“Visitors interact with the exhibition as an immersive game. They’ll learn about six different aspects of voting rights history — ratification, gerrymandering, civil rights, women’s clubs, enfranchisement and the differing notions of majority — and suffrage ties to each topic. In each section of the exhibition, visitors will have an active role by voting for the most representative objects and losing or gaining votes through spinning game wheels,” Stump said.
There also will be an exhibition of suffrage celebration collages on the third floor of the gallery.
As for the piece coming out so close to a real election, Stump said the proximity was not part of the initial plan.
“COVID-19 and the most recent events of social unrest through the summer really eclipsed, as it should have, the centennial of the 19th Amendment,” Stump said. “I thought to open this exhibition during the election season actually would be as timely as anything. You learn so much about the marginalization of voters, disenfranchisement, voter suppression, what are the roots of the electoral college, what is a majority, what is a super majority, kind of how the sausage gets made in terms of voting rights.”
This story was originally published November 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
