There are so many little museums in New York that it’s hard to keep up, but it’s definitely worth the effort. One of the exhibit spaces I keep an eye on is the Grolier Club, which currently has an exhibit called Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection.
I was interested in the exhibit because the description made me think about the WNBA centennial book Women in the Literary Landscape. For those of you who read our book, there’s lots of overlap here. It’s very exciting to see some of the original publications, manuscripts, letters and photographs described in our book. There’s an original copy of Sojourner Truth’s memoir of her life as a slave; Anne Bradstreet’s book of poems–she was the first published poet in the colonies; and a signed copy of Phyllis Wheatley’s volume of poems from 1773.
In addition, the exhibition brings together writings from the great suffragists, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the great women abolitionists, like the Grimke sisters, as well as artifacts from women in England and Europe who were scientists, doctors, writers, printers, bookbinders, architects, and political activists. The earliest document–from 1240–is inscribed on parchment and refers to a husband and wife who donated funds to build a house for repentant prostitutes. A 1630 letter written by painter Artemisia Gentileschi to her patron requests permission for her assistant to carry arms since she began living in dangerous Naples. It’s quite a trove of information about women’s lives and contributions, as well as the social strictures that prevented women from making use of their own talents.
Lisa Baskin Unger lovingly assembled the collection over a period of 45 years. Until it was recently donated to Duke University, it was the largest such collection in private hands–over 11,000 items. The exhibit is on view until February 8th at the Grolier Club, 147 E. 60th St.
Rosalind Reisner is the editor and a contributing author of Women in the Literary Landscape: A Centennial Publication of the Women’s National Book Association, published this fall by C&R Press.
