museum exhibit review: MASC

The exhibit that I chose to review is the one currently on display at Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections at WSU. The exhibit is called “Baskets, Bonnets & Pincushions: Interpreting the Life and Work of Mary Richardson Walker”. The objectives of this exhibit are to demonstrate through photos, diary entries, clothing and other personal artifacts from Mary Richardson Walker, what her life was like. It also shows how she had to reconcile gender roles of the time because she was expected to become a mother and a housewife, but it is clear that she wanted to either teach, become a nurse or a missionary instead. Through the exhibit we find out that in order to accomplish her goal of becoming a missionary she had to become a wife and mother first, and was never able to escape the life that society laid out for her.
The materials that MASC chose to display to tell her story are Mary’s diaries from 1836 and 1838, letters to and from her family as well as communication with officials when she was trying to become a missionary. They also have displayed some of the 200 books from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walker which include bibles, and texts on science and medicine. Artifacts from Mary’s home are also on display. These include a quilt, dresses, bonnets, gloves, a writing desk from her trip on the Oregon Trail, and her own personal paintings.
I think that this exhibit was effective in getting its objective across because I was able to learn what life was like for a woman who traveled the Oregon Trail and was a missionary in this area in the 1800s. Generally in history the stories that are told only give one over-arching idea of what life was like, but this exhibit gave a personal account of one woman and the difficulties she faced in life. I learned the complexity of what she faced when trying to balance what she was passionate about with the constraints placed on her gender at the time.
The restrictions that women faced were clear through the diary entries and letters in the exhibit. A letter from one of the men in charge of missionary work in the West telling Mary that they typically do not send single women to be missionaries was placed next to a letter introducing Mary to her future husband. This effectively shows how important marriage was in religion and society and how much women were identified by their marital status. Her diary entries also note how much she disdained housework, possibly being one of the reasons that she did not want to marry and have children. However, the exhibit goes on to show through the house wares on display that as a missionary one of her duties was to display the qualities of a good wife to the natives. By using both written sources and materials taken from her home, the visitor can get a sense of what Mary’s life was like as well as her thoughts on it.
My favorite part of the exhibit was the clothing that was on display because even if there had been no explanation of what the items were used for, you were able to compare the clothes that women typically wore in the 1800s to the clothing that women wear now. The most interesting fact in this aspect of the exhibit was that women typically weighed much less and were quite a few inches shorter than the average female in the United States today. While the label explained this, it made it much more real to see it in person and to compare it to myself. It was also effectively displayed because the dresses were not in the case, but were free-standing on the floor, making them much more accessible. I also learned that I could see more of Mary Richardson Walker’s clothing at the Historical Costume and Textiles Collection in the Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Design and Textiles at WSU.
I chose this exhibit to review because over the past month I have visited MASC several times for different classes but never had to time to walk through the exhibit, read the information and take in all the materials on display. While a lot of people would not seek out this exhibit to go to during the week, I think that those who do visit it and are interested in the material will take a lot away from it. I think the creators of the exhibit did a good job of telling Mary’s story because they introduced the visitor to primary sources of various types instead of just using diaries or textiles they told her life story through books, letters, household objects and text that tied all the information together. I think that if the visitor can leave the exhibit having learned something and is more interested in the subject of the exhibit, then it was effective, and that is what I left Baskets, Bonnets & Pincushions feeling.