The new Heinz History Center exhibit “A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh” covers two centuries of history with some 250 artifacts about women’s roles in all aspects of life here, from business and politics to sports, the arts and equal rights struggles.
It’s a celebration of everyone from philanthropist Mary Schenley and pioneering journalist Nellie Bly to National Negro Opera Company founder Mary Cardwell Dawson and car repair entrepreneur Lucille Treganowan (of Transmissions by Lucille fame).
In photos, documents, personal items from wedding gowns to baseball mitts, and immersive and interactive displays, visitors will learn about figures as famous as Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff — the first woman and the first Jew to hold the office — and as overlooked as barrier-breaking bowler Louise Fulton, among the first Black women on the professional bowling circuit and the first Black person to win a pro-bowling tournament.
But organizers note that the exhibit also recounts how women’s hard-won gains have sometimes been rolled back.
Take one of the exhibit’s most iconic, if fictional figures: Rosie the Riveter. A mannequin, complete with polka-dotted red bandanna and roomy blue jeans, recalls the character’s World War II-era origins.
But Leslie Przybylek, the Center’s senior curator, calls Rosie’s history “complicated.”
The “We Can Do It” poster that popularized Rosie was first produced around 1942 for Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. Przybylek notes the poster was created with the expectation that women who went to work in factories during the war “were largely going to give up those jobs when the war was done.”
And while many of these women liked the ability to earn their own wages, among other benefits, they still had to relinquish the jobs, Przybylek said. Nonetheless, starting in the 1990s — in a very different social context — the bicep-flexing image was reborn as a slightly campy but otherwise unironic symbol of grit, determination and women’s empowerment.
Similarly, a photo of local political activist Brenda Frazier wearing an “ERA Now” button recalls the passion of ’70s-era activism — and also the fact that the Equal Rights Amendment, popular though it was, has yet to become part of the U.S. Constitution.
The exhibit includes plenty of stories of victories, including how suffragists like Lucy Kennedy Miller and Winifred Meek Morris helped secure women the right to vote.
But there are also accounts of women ahead of their time, like the 14 Western Pennsylvania women who played in the All-American Girls Pro Baseball League, created to sustain interest in hardball during World War II. The league drew a million fans in 1948, said the Center’s chief historian, Anne Madarasz. But after its dissolution, in the 1950s, it was all but forgotten until Penny Marshall’s hit 1992 movie “A League of Their Own” revived its memory. (Decades later, a streaming series shot in Pittsburgh followed.)
In sports, the arts and elsewhere, and much like other marginalized groups, women have had to create their own opportunities. “A Woman’s Place” also honors the two 16-year-old girls who in the 1870s organized a women’s rowing meet and drew 10,000 spectators — only to see the sport sink without further trace until the emergence of Three Rivers Rowing Association more than a century later.
Unlike many History Center exhibits, which are largely touring shows, “A Woman’s Place” is almost entirely homegrown, with most of the artifacts coming from the Center’s own extensive archive.
Exceptions include the alligator-skin traveling bag used by Nellie Bly on her famous trip around the world in 72 days, in 1889. The item is on loan from the Freedom Forum (a nonprofit fostering First Amendment freedoms). In those days, people traveled with whole steamer trunks, and women’s clothing was voluminous. Przybylek said the grip — the size of a large handbag — succinctly symbolizes Bly’s determination in the face of sexist resistance.
Although Bly was known for her daring investigative feats, like feigning insanity to go undercover inside a mental institution, editors were reluctant to even give her the assignment that ultimately won her such fame.
“They said, ‘Oh, you’ll have to take multiple suitcases, you’ll need someone to help you. You won’t be able to do this,’” said Przybylek. “And this is kind of symbolic of her saying, ‘I’ll show you. I’ll do it with just this.'”
There’s lots more in “A Woman’s Place,” including tributes to figures as diverse as civil rights activist Alma Speed Fox, “Sesame Street” artist Peggy Owens Skillen and an all-girls Carnegie Mellon University robotics team. Longtime Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra keyboardist Patricia Prattis Jennings is recognized as the first Black woman signed to a contract by a major U.S. symphony. (That was in 1966.) Allegheny City natives like influential silent-era filmmaker Lois Weber and famed painter and activist Mary Cassatt are also honored.
An interactive display lets visitors explore some of the region’s many women-led civic organizations, from the Twentieth Century Club and the Pittsburgh Women’s Press Club to the Feminist Karate Union.
Meanwhile, the museum continues to solicit the stories of area women who contributed to their communities, famous or otherwise. (Learn more here.)
As Przybylek said, women’s achievements are hardly confined to traditional categories. “It’s not one thing, it’s many roles,” she said.
“A Woman’s Place” opens Sat., March 23, and runs through Oct. 6.
[Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the mission of the Freedom Forum.]
