Enterprising Women marks a new direction for NMWA as we expand the museum’s mandate to address entrepreneurship as an important aspect of “women’s culture.” Recognizing that rising tide of women who have succeeded in American business since the 1960s—from media moguls Katherine Graham and Oprah Winfrey to eBay President Meg Whitman, salon founder Elizabeth Arden, and construction company and baseball team owner Linda Alvarado—this exhibition establishes their important place and also acknowledges their predecessors in American history.

The goal of Enterprising Women is to change Americans’ conceptions of the role and significance of female entrepreneurs in the U.S. economy since the 1700s in agriculture, manufacturing, fashion, wholesale and retail trades, communications, the arts, and the service and technology sectors. Through the exploration of biographies and material culture, visitors will learn that the women—who as of 2003 own almost forty percent of American business firms—are traveling a well-worn, centuries-old road, albeit a wider and smoother highway now. The exhibition illustrates and invites visitors to question how definitions and markers of womanhood, ownership, and business success have changed since the days of our founding foremothers and fathers.

At NMWA, the exhibition will be augmented with a number of unique and beautiful objects—most of which were deemed too fragile to tour—from the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. To complement the exhibition, NMWA has re-installed part of its permanent collection to focus on women artists and entrepreneurship in America. Beginning with Sarah Miriam Peale, the nation’s first successful professional woman artist, through to Georgia O’Keeffe’s stunning successes in the 1980s, the museum’s Great Hall will be filled with paintings and stories that highlight American women’s artistic ingenuity. NMWA’s Library and Research Center also will display works by American women illustrators such as Violet Oakley and Jessie Wilcox Smith, elucidating another path women took toward economic and social independence. By establishing this context at NMWA, Enterprising Women will offer visitors an authentic, first-time understanding of the significant role and impact of women entrepreneurs in the U.S. as well as providing insights about women artists’ successes from 1750 to the present day.

SPONSORS

Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business is organized by the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Heritage Museum, Lexington, Massachusetts.

The exhibition and its national tour are made possible by generous support from Ford Motor Company and AT&T. Both companies have also provided support for the exhibition's presentation in Washington, D.C.

Additional support is provided by the Cabot Family Charitable Trust with in-kind support from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Local presentation is funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services by an Act of Congress, and by Hecht's.

The exhibition is presented at the National Museum of Women in the Arts October 24, 2003 to February 29, 2004. Education programs are held in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, Behring Center, and the National Museum of the American Indian, the Library of Congress, and the Textile Museum. For additional information about the exhibition, visit www.enterprisingwomenexhibit.org or www.nmwa.org