A Womanís Place Exhibit Shows How Women Overcame Obstacles to Become Entrepreneurs by Heather Nalbone Anyone looking for a relaxing art display is likely to be surprised upon entering ìEnterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business.î Unlike most presentations at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the exhibit is not a tribute to artistic works. Although there are paintings, sketches and photographs of various women under study, the exhibit relies more on text to describe the trials and triumphs of female ranchers, printers, fashion designers, bankers and lawyers in patriarchal America. The display is intended to tell a story not of painters or photographers, but of the women who comprise a largely overlooked piece of entrepreneurial history in America. The exhibit uses an array of artifactsófrom printing presses and diaries to costumes, legal documents and photographsóto tell the tales of more than 40 women inventors, innovators and trendsetters from 1750 to today. ìëEnterprising Womení will transform understanding of American business history by presenting the experiences of women who overcame daunting obstacles to become entrepreneurs,î said Project Director Jane K nowles. ìThese women of the past have left an important legacy for the American women of today, who own more than 7.7 million firms, representing 40 percent of businesses operating in the United States at the opening of the 21st century.î The exhibit begins with a display on Juana Briones, a 19th-century housewife-turned-rancher who won legal ownership of her husbandís 4,440-acre farm by proving him to be too drunk to support his family. Within a matter of years, she was successfully managing a cattle-and-horse farm and shipping hides for sale by oxcart to San Francisco. Many of the other featured women are more recognizable. There are tributes to Elizabeth Arden, Madam C.J. Walker and Hattie Carnegie. The most interesting displays, however, are those of little-known women who unwittingly played a big role in transforming the American entrepreneurial tapestry. Myra Bradwell, for instance, turned defeat into success after being denied by the U.S. Supreme Court to practice law because she was a woman. Her response was in the form of a newsletter titled ìChicago Legal News,î which became the ìbibleî for countless lawyers and was eventually molded into a paper that advocated womenís rights. Other notables include Ruth Handler, who co-founded the Mattel toy company, and Mary Katherine Goddard, an 18th-century publisher who printed the Declaration of Independence. An audiovisual ìeducation galleryî connects these historical figures to the modern American businesswoman whose path they paved. The simple interactive display uses recorded interviews to personalize the stories of several contemporary trendsetters, including media magnate Katharine Graham, culinary expert Julia Child and candy manufacturer Ellen Gordon. The exhibit, which is on loan from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Mass., will move to the Los Angeles Public Library and the Detroit Historical Museum after its Washington run. ìEnterprising Women: 250 Years of American Businessî runs through Feb. 29 at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave., NW. For more information, please call (202) 783-5000 or visit www.nmwa.org. Heather Nalbone is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. Labor-Intensive Display in Baltimore The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) isnít the only museum featuring an exhibit with a business-oriented theme. At the Baltimore Museum of Art, the subject of ìWork Ethicî is labor . Having said that, similarities between the two displays end there. Unlike the NMWA display, the presentation in Baltimore focuses on contemporary artists and their interpretations of the workplace. It includes everything from various film and video recordings to a blank piece of paper that columnist Tom Friedman claims to have stared at for five years. The display is a modern one, focusing on works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and the artists theyíve inspired. It is a far cry from NMWAís text-driven display about American women in business, and its appeal is remarkably different. There are 80 works created by artists from around the world, all sorted into categories such as ìArtist as Managerî and ìQuitting Time.î The display was arranged by the Baltimore Museum of Art and will travel on to museums in Iowa, Ohio and elsewhere. ìWork Ethicî runs through Jan. 4 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, Md. For more information, please call (410) 396-7100 or visit www.artbma.org. óHeather Nalbone