Athenæum Launches ‘(Anti)SUFFRAGE’ Exhibition

The Boston Athenæum has launched an online exhibit called “(Anti)SUFFRAGE” at https://www.bostonathenaeum.org/exhibitions/antisuffrage

The new, permanent online exhibition highlights rare books, broadsides, photographs and other items from the Boston Athenæum’s special collections. From a variety of perspectives, they reveal how the suffrage movement in the United States, which led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, contributed to redesigning the societal roles and responsibilities of women as they vied for equality.

The exhibition presents the complexities of the struggle to secure and protect voting rights for

women and people of color in the past and today.

A few highlights include: “Votes for Women” playing cards, issued by the National American Woman Suffrage

Association circa 1915; a contemporary artist’s book by Boston artist Laura Davidson, “We’ve Been Holding This

Sign for 100 Years” (2018); a photographic portrait of suffragist Sojourner Truth (1864) that she commissioned and sold to support the cause; and The Trial of Susan B. Anthony, On the Charge of Illegal Voting , 1874, autographed by Anthony and donated to the Athenæum in 1877

“(Anti)SUFFRAGE” was curated by Theo Tyson , the Polly Thayer Starr Fellow in American Art and Culture at the Boston Athenæum, and was originally on view in the BA’s Henry Long Room from Nov. 1, 2019 to March 13, 2020.

Visit https://www.bostonathenaeum.org/exhibitions/antisuffrage for more information.