Picturing Women

Does it matter who is looking?

Who decides what is feminine?

Who is telling the story?

Is beauty skindeep?

JN Gimbrede engraver after JJ Grandville
'Marvel of Peru' in 'The Flowers Personified' 1847

No paint, nor powder, needs that skin of thine
Shroud not the beauty in goods of cost,
For only know, my beaut'ous Valentine,
Beauty, when unadorned's adorned the most.

Carl E. Miksch, M.D. Jefferson Medical College Faculty of 1923

Franz Hanfstaeng after Joseph Stieler
mezzotint before 1858
August Strobel. Kgl. Residenz zu München No. 12

'Tricycle Dress' in The Exhibition of the Rational Dress Association 1883

From an exhibition held last year at Bryn Mawr College, the Picturing Women website was established to display sketches, cartoons, photographs and rare book illustrations of women through history. It is primarily a teaching aid in which evocative questions are posted alongside images arranged in thematic vignettes. There are filmed sequences from interviews and performances occurring during the original exhibition, an extensive online link list and library bibliography, ecards and lesson plans. There's quite a bit to see here.

Picturing Women features material from Bryn Mawr College, the Rosenbach Museum & Libary and The Library Company of Philadelphia. (flash, music initially)