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Women in the Weisman Collection is part of a Twin Cities-wide celebration commemorating the 150th anniversary of
the first American womenÕs rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848. Lucretia Mott (1793Ð1880) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815Ð1902) were the two pioneering reformers who initiated this historic gathering of 300 women and men that launched the organized modern movement to win equal rights for women. Both Mott and Stanton were keenly aware of repressive laws that constricted American womenÕs lives. Mott taught school and received half the wages of her male colleagues, solely because she was a woman. Stanton, the daughter of a New York State Supreme Court judge and wife of an antislavery lawyer, was particularly sensitive to the facts that women were ineligible to own property, to keep wages if they were married, or to claim guardianship of their children in case of divorce. | The 1848 convention they organized issued a Declaration of
Rights and SentimentsÑmodeled on the United States Declaration of IndependenceÑthat made the then-revolutionary
assertion that Òall men and women are created equal.Ó It went on to call for a range of social and legal reforms. Fifty years later, women could point to progress in property rights, employment and educational opportunities, divorce and custody laws, and generally improved social mobility. But it was not until August 1920 that the long struggle to secure the right to vote for all American women was concluded with the ratification and adoption of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1972 Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, aimed at completing the work begun in Seneca Falls. But because the amendment was not ratified by the required three-quarters majority of the states, it did not become part of the Constitution. The Seneca Falls Convention took place during a year full of momentous political events worldwide whose ramifications continue to be felt today. | During 1848 bloody worker and student insurrections erupted in Austria,
France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and elsewhereÑall fought to champion democracy in one form or other.
Most of them were brutally suppressed.
That year also saw the publication of Karl Marx and Friedrich EngelsÕ
Communist Manifesto, with its indictment of industrial capitalism and passionate call to workers internationally
to push collectively for rights and protections. The unmistakable theme of 1848, then, was one of agitation in
the name of social justice and equality. Women in the Weisman Collection acknowledges the reforming spirit of 1848, and of the last 150 years of womenÕs history, while also celebrating more recent accomplishments by women in the visual arts. Some 80 works by 63 artistsÑall women, including 27 MinnesotansÑare on view. Selections were made from the holdings of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum.
Patricia McDonnell, Curator |