Every time we add another portrait to the Portraits of American Women file in ImPAC it’s a cause for celebration. As Curator of Women’s History, I find that
adding to the file is my favorite thing. As a whole, it provides glimpses of so
many women’s lives: famous women, infamous women, and ordinary women too. For
me, the total is more than the sum of the parts.
In 2013, we topped 300 portraits. They depict murder victims
and perpetrators, presidents’ and diplomats’ wives, writers, missionaries,
actresses, thieves, famous beauties (some of whom were fictitious), girls who
were held captive, teachers, adulteresses, and divorcees. There are nice girls
who died pious deaths (such as Sarah Fellowes Davis) and mean girls who spread
harmful gossip (like Elizabeth Ellet). All of the portraits appeared in books
and periodicals before 1861.
I try not to have favorites. Each one can be my favorite-of-the-moment,
depending on what I’m doing. When a reader is interested in the history of the
classification of children who are developmentally challenged as “imbeciles,” I
think of Beckie and Bessie:
When I want to consider the actress Charlotte Cushman,
famous for her performances as Romeo in Romeo
and Juliet, I can juxtapose a caricature of her with a “straight” portrait:
This past summer we acquired the first volume of Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion,
in which the caricature appears. To our immense surprise, the original 1851
issues of Gleason’s include the
article associated with that caricature, but the reprint of the volume three years
later did not! Had we not gone looking for it to reproduce in the “Cushmania”
section of our next exhibition “That’s So Gay: Outing Early America,” we would never have realized that the
reprint edition (a copy of which is held by the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania) did not include the remarkable issue in which the reviewer discusses
Cushman’s portrayal of Romeo. Cushman was enormously successful as an actress
who performed in male roles, and off-stage she apparently was quite a Romeo as
well. When she was living in Rome after retiring from the stage, she typically
had a young female protégé as well as a peer relationship with a female
partner.
One of my favorite aspects of the Portraits of American Women file is the chance juxtaposition of women, thanks to its alphabetic arrangement:
Cynthia Taggart (invalid poet),
Sarah Louisa Taylor (exemplary
Christian), H. Trusta (novelist who
wrote under a nom de plume), Sojourner Truth
(itinerant preacher), Tshusick (itinerant
con artist), Ruth Tucker (patient at
Pennsylvania Hospital), and so forth. They are all wonderful – each in her own
way.
Connie King
Curator of Women's History
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