Wanda Margarite Kirkbride Farr (b. 1895), sitting in lab with microscope, Smithsonian Insitution Archives
New Use for Light Reflector, National Museum of American History
I was intrigued by a recent post on the National Museum of American History’s (NMAH) blog about the portrayal of women in the Science Service records. Arthur Molella director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, writes:
“… women are invariably passive or admiring observers. In other words, females are shown dominated by rather than in charge of technology… On the contrary, at the Lemelson Center we have uncovered ample evidence of significant female contributions. But, given the skewed nature of the visual record, we have had to work very hard to find this evidence.”
These couldn’t be the same women I’d begun to know and love through the photos the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) posted to the SI Flickr Commons. And it certainly wasn’t the women SIA archivists, Ellen Alers and Mary Markey, described in their posts.
After giving a call over to SIA, I found out that when the Science Service records were transferred to the Smithsonian during the 1970s (over 500 boxes!), records were distributed throughout SI depending on their relevancy to a museum’s expertise and mission. So, for example, any material dealing with the history electrical innovation and invention went to the Division of Electricity and Modern Physics at what was then named the National Museum of History and Technology (now NMAH). Other parts of the Science Service records followed, going to other NMAH curatorial divisions, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of Natural History, National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution Archives. The women in the photos at the Lemelson Center indeed look more like early 20th century Vanna White’s then the women in the SIA records.
Once again, I’m reminded never to take any picture, or collection for that matter, at face value!
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Nicely stated, Effie. The Science Service manuscripts, correspondence, and photographs stored throughout the Smithsonian represent mirrors (and, sometimes, broken or fragmented ones) of the organization, its purposes, and its values. As a news organization, Science Service simply saved and filed everything, including much that never saw publication…and that makes these records exceptionally valuable resources for historians of photography as well as of science and journalism. Those same records, especially Record Unit 7091, also reveal the organization’s unheralded but progressive attitudes toward women in both science and journalism, something perhaps related to its leadership. The first director of Science Service, Edwin Emery Slosson, was married to suffragist May Preston Slosson, the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and when he substituted as a speaker for her at a January 11, 1910, suffrage rally, he received considerable newspaper coverage for the daring act. He was eulogized in 1929 as “a pioneer in advocating woman suffrage at a time when advocates of that doctrine were jeered and laughed at.” The organization’s second director, Watson Davis, hired and advanced the careers of many female science journalists, including Jane Stafford and Marjorie Van de Water (featured in the Smithsonian’s Flickr images). Good historians look beneath and behind and under the obvious. Thank you for emphasizing that so well.