SEEING SUFFRAGE AT THE DELAWARE ART MUSEUM

Seeing Suffrage at the Delaware Art Museum, Delaware Art Museum (online exhibition), 2019–Present.

This online exhibition explores the impact and legacy of the expansion of suffrage in the United States with objects from the collection of the Delaware Art Museum. 

The first selection of works presents contentious views of the women's suffrage movement made around the same time. Created during the first two decades of the 20th century, these images, produced by popular illustrators and artists of the day, reveal differing opinions about whether women should get the vote.

The second selection of works deals with representations of women's and African American suffrage created by looking at the past. These images are strongly nostalgic and full of positive emotion, leaving out the struggles that are so clearly indicated in part through the cartoons of Gordon Grant, Ira Glackens, and Leighton Budd.

How were these movements seen when they were active? How do we think of the struggle for the vote after the right to vote has been legally secured? And how do artists dealing with these themes choose to represent this struggle?