Women's History/Public History—: Where the Twain Meet

Women's Hbtory/Public HistoryWhere the Twain Meet Jeanne Farr McDonnell The Women's Heritage Museum (WHM), based in Palo Alto, California, calls itself a museum-without-walls. The organization's goals and methods are those of a museum. Its purpose now is to acquire a buüding that wUl remove the "without waUs" part of the name. The museum incorporated in February 1985. One of its three originators continues to work fuU time as executive diredor (for expenses and without compensation until last year). New and long-standing volunteers and donors help in the myriad and diverse efforts that cause an enterprise to flourish. Corporations, foundations, and organizations funded an exhibit on California woman suffrage and an abridgement of it for smaUer spaces and briefer occasions, a video series of seven interviews for pubtic access television, and various sirrdlar projeds. The museum also publishes quarterly a miniature newspaper about adivism in public education in women's history nationwide. The museum's board of directors derided at the outset to engage in program work in order to buüd a constituency and to accomplish the goals of the organization even without the physical appurtenances of a museum. This decision pushed the group in the direction of becoming sirrdlar to a very active historical sodety, but one that spedalizes in coUaboration. For example, WHM and the Oakland Museum celebrated National Women's History Month together, sponsoring a talk and stide presentation by the curator of an exhibit, "Women and American Railroading," that wül premiere July through December 1990 at the State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. A more extensive coUaboration resulted in the "California Woman Suffrage, 1870-1911" exhibit, aeated by WHM and the California History Center at De Anza Community CoUege in Cupertino. Since the exhibit's opening in 1986 for the seventy-fifth anniversary of California women's gaining equal voting rights, this eight-panel exhibit has been booked at the State Capitol for three successive years and at five other locations, including the National Women's HaU of Fame in Seneca FaUs, New York. In its home community of Palo Alto, WHM undertook the preservation for pubtic education of the house of Juana Briones y Tapia de Miranda (1802-1889), a woman designated by one historian as "the preeminent woman" of colonial California history.1 An agreement based on more than two years of research and negotiation culminated in limited legal historic © 1990 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 2 No. 2 CFall) 172 Journal of Women's History Fall protection for the structure, a tax abatement for the resident owner, and the right of public access twenty days a year under WHM auspices. A WHM course for docents instruded a corps of dedicated tour guides, and monthly tours provide occasions to disseminate information about multicultural women's history to new audiences. Extensive damage to the house in the Odober 1989 earthquake added a new layer to the history of the Juana Briones houses, and WHM tours continue in a shored-up structure that chaUenges anew the ingenuity of preservationists of women's history. Opportunities for promoting public recognition of women in history pop up in unantidpated ways. Research for the suffrage exhibit inspired a project to obtain a state historic marker for Sarah WaIUs, a California suffragist, and dedicating the marker brought out a crowd and local celebrities. A second application for a state historic plaque was less successful . The state granted a plaque for Juana Briones, but the San Francisco Department of Recreation and Parks denied WHM's request to mount the plaque in Washington Square. This obstacle cum opportunity initiated a rewarding search for support, especiaUy among Latino groups, that enriched WHM's base of support and community understanding. These kinds of efforts are museum-like in that they are direded toward the general pubtic and they enhance the weight and accessibitity of ideas by speaking through the tangible dimension of physical objects. One of the purposes of the museum is to act as a resource to assist and encourage other institutions. One such projed is the new and dynamic Armenian Women's Archives Projed. WHM is their fiscal agent, facUitating their valuable preservation of...