The Grace Museum is showcasing a student-curated collection to celebrate Women’s History Month as part of its cultural heritage exhibition series. This month’s exhibition contains research focused mainly on the women of Abilene.
Students in Dr. Amanda Biles’ history 301 class, a course focused on public history and museum work, were given the opportunity to put their learned skills into practice by creating this exhibit. Research was done by looking at old newspapers, the Abilene Reporter News and photograph archives.
“What that looks like in terms of the process was having the students research women who were important to this community,” Biles said. “Students then pull all those sources together and analyze them and come up with a really exciting story to tell based on that historical research.”
One of the students who participated in this exhibition, Jane Tomlinson, graduated from ACU and now works at the Grace Museum. Her written piece covers the U.S. military’s first women, The Wasps.
“I knew a lot of the points that I was already going to write from my internship at the Wasp museum,” Tomlinson said. “But it was learning how to best communicate so much source material, and so much rich, in-depth history, into a format that would actually work and actually be able to captivate the public who want to come see it.”
Other exhibition stories include pieces about the women in the Abilene Police Department, the League of Women Voters in the 1950s and the Abilene business and professional women’s club. Biles said these stories show the importance of studying women’s history.
“I think sometimes we forget how instrumental women are in building our communities, especially in the early years,” Biles said. “We tend to think of women as always being at home, and certainly that’s a really important contribution, but this exhibit shows us that women contributed in so many different ways.”
Tomlinson said March is about new beginnings, which she thinks women embody through their historical contributions that have helped shape the world.
“Men are just kind of inherently viewed as the movers and shakers in the world and throughout world history,” Tomlinson said. “But I mean, women have always been 50% of the population, so why have they always been such a small part of history?”
The exhibition will be available to view at the Grace Museum through Saturday. Tomlinson encourages people to engage with the stories and invest in their community.
“Women’s Month isn’t just for women,” Tomlinson said. “It feels like a time for just women to celebrate it, but women’s history is everyone’s history.”
Visit the Grace Museum’s website https://thegracemuseum.org/history/ for more information on the Cultural Heritage Museum and any upcoming events they plan to host.
