# data[].attributes.headline
Акція "Бережи електроенегрію"

# data[].attributes.subject
Акція "Бережи електроенегрію"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"The Queen is anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights' with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety."

Queen Victoria to Sir Theodore Martin, 1870

"The Meserve-Kunhardt Collection is one of the oldest private collections of Victorian photography in the United States. It has long been famous as a rich mine of Civil War images and portraits of Abraham Lincoln. What is less well known is that while Frederick Hill Meserve (1865-1962) gathered rare photos of American men from the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras, he also collected thousands of female portraits.

'This Mad, Wicked Folly' is the first exhibit to reveal the breadth and depth of Meserve's collection of rare photographs of women. In 2002, I was invited to tour collection. I couldn't help noticing rows of albums, on the lower shelves, whose labels all began with the letter "W." When I finally asked what they contained, I was told they were "just the women"; their turn would come later, alphabetically, after the men, who filled albums A-Z. I could not bear to imagine thousands of American women languishing in obscurity so I appealed to Peter Kunhardt Sr. who readily gave me permission to archive the photos in the W albums and restore them to their rightful place in the collection.

Then in 2012, I was invited to curate an exhibit that would tell the stories of these 19th century women. The photos here, most of them unique to the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection, open the door to astonishing histories, some of which are narrated here for the first time. Among these prim and dignified ladies are spies, surgeons, entrepreneurs, theatrical producers, newspaper publishers, poisoners, and male impersonators. From giantesses to sculptresses and seamstresses, all these remarkable sitters - even those shackled by racism, poverty, lack of education, homophobia, or physical disabilities - succeeded in battling overwhelming sexism to make their visions (however mad or wicked) a reality."

-Kathryn Gravdal, PhD

We invite you to explore these portraits. To learn more about each woman, simply click on the photograph to read her story. We hope "This Mad, Wicked Folly" can serve as a resource for teachers and students of women's history, gender studies, African-American studies, art history, gay and lesbian studies, the history of photography, among other fields of study.

Monarch of England and its vast empire, Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901. The most powerful woman in the world, Victoria spluttered with rage at the notion of women's rights, which had been touted in Great Britain since the 18th century. She condemned it as a "mad wicked folly." The Queen let it be known that a woman's duty was to use her God-given moral and spiritual superiority to serve her husband and give children a pious education. In the United States, Victoria's attitudes became enshrined in what was known as the Cult of True Womanhood, which demanded that women adhere to the four tenets of piety, purity, domesticity, and submission.

Queen Victoria cast a long shadow in Britain's former colony, the United States. Victorian America - a term that usually refers to the heavily populated Northeast as well as the Deep South - aspired to emulate Victorian styles and ideas. This period witnessed the Second Industrial Revolution and the Women's Suffrage movement. Increasing prosperity in the worlds of business and industry triggered the growth of a "gilded" upper class that eagerly replicated the manners, morals, and esthetics of the former mother country.

By contrast, most of the female sitters in this exhibit rejected the restraints placed upon them as women and struggled for power: professional, artistic, legal, financial, political, or sexual. As if hoisting the Queen by her own petard, the women in this collection seized upon the Victorian discourse of "opposite" sexes, which presumed the superior moral and spiritual strength of females, to promote their own ambitions.

HEALERS: WOMEN IN AND OUT OF MEDICINE

American women healers were limited to a narrow range of roles, such as midwives and herbalists, until the first female medical schools in the U.S. appeared in the 1850s. Dr. Clemence Lozier established New York's first female medical school in 1863. As early as 1870 the school graduated Susan McKinney Steward, the first black woman in New York State to earn a medical degree. But this institution's establishment was hardly a smooth process; her students required police escorts to attend lectures at Bellevue Hospital because of hostility from male doctors and students. Dr. Lozier was also a supporter of female suffrage and homeopathy.

The great medical development of the 19th century, homeopathy played a key role in opening medical schools to women. This section includes Susan Edson, M.D., a homeopath who was President James Garfield's personal physician. The orthodox male doctors barred her from caring for the president after his assassination, despite her position as White House physician, forbidding her to do anything other than fan Garfield's brow.

Selection and text - Kathryn Gravdal, PhD
The Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation - Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director; Amanda Smith, Archivist; James Jordan, Collections Manager
Special thanks goes to - Peter Kunhardt Sr., Jill Cowan, and Nate Mattison

The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"This Mad, Wicked Folly": Victorian American Women - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"The Meserve-Kunhardt Collection is one of the oldest private collections of Victorian photography in the United States. It has long been famous as a ric...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"U.S. Women's Rights Movement Emerges"

"We ask only for justice and equal rights-the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law"

- Lucy Stone

A talented and persuasive orator, Mary Livermore made an excellent living on the 19th-century lyceum circuit for more than 20 years. Livermore often couched her appeals in terms of women's special responsibilities as caregivers at home and to the nation. In the speech "The Boy of To-Day" Livermore argues that mothers are crucial to shaping men of character:

"If the ranks of manly men can be increased among us, and then be supplemented by large numbers of womanly women. . . we need not fear for the future of the nation."

- Elizabeth L. Maurer, Director of Program
- Emily McAfee, Project Researcher
- Sydnee Winston, Project Coordinator
- Randi Greenberg, Registrar
- Lee Stalsworth, Photography
- From an exhibit curated by Jeanne and Robert Schramm

The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pathways To Equality - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new group of women reformers emerged in nineteenth-century America. These educated women set out to solve social and economic problems caused by injust...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The collection of photographs and negatives of the Museum of the Bolshoi Theatre has a great number of unique items. The collection comprises masterpieces by Russian photographers who have been recognized as classics of theatrical photography, including C. A. Fischer, M. A. Sakharov, A. A. Gornshtein, E. P. Umnov, and G. F. Solovyev. The collection serves as an excellent source of materials to study the history of Russian theatrical photography.

The most valuable portion of the collection is its corpus of photographs dating from the 1860s-1910s. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, many theatrical companies acknowledged the significance of photography, and many theatres established their own studios.

For example, in the Moscow Art Theatre, K. S. Stanislavski and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko introduced a system for the compulsory photographing of scenes from plays and actors, and then organized backstage photo shoots after rehearsals. In the Bolshoi Theatre, it was A. A. Gorsky that initiated systematic photo shoots.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bolshoy vintage photography - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Artistic photographs and amateur shots from the photo archive of the European Solidarity Centre (ECS) in Gdańsk

Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, Director of the Polish Institute, Berlin:

"The strikes centred around the NSZZ Solidarity trade union, led by Lech Wałęsa, triggered one of the largest liberation movements of the twentieth century, ultimately leading to political change in Poland. Countless professional and amateur photographers at the scene delivered iconic images of the protests. Photographs from well-known documentary photographers, such as Erazm Ciołek or Stanisław Markowski, have become part of a collective visual memory. In contrast, images by less well-known and amateur photographers remain largely undiscovered. In the archive of the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk slumber treasures which give unselfconscious and intimate insights into the strikes on the Gdańsk Shipyard and tell us of events which have, until now, been largely ignored in public discourse. Among the most impressive works are, for example, the pictures taken at the Polish university protests. Sabine Weier, the curator of the exhibition, compiled photographs from the Gdańsk archive, which make it possible to view the history of Solidarity in a different way. Some of the images are being displayed for the first time in this exhibition. These are artistic works and amateur shots which put a spotlight on the people and convey an atmosphere of hope, which finally allowed the project of freedom to be realised."

Basil Kerski, Director of the European Solidarity Centre (ECS) in Gdańsk:

„2014 is a significant year in European remembrance. This year, we not only look back at the out-breaks of the First and Second World Wars, 100 and 75 years ago respectively, but also the victory of the anti-communist revolution in central Europe 25 years ago. A large, permanent exhibition about the revolutions in Poland and central and eastern Europe, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union, will open in the European Solidarity Centre (ECS) in Gdańsk on the August 30th/31st 2014 to commemorate the Solidarity trade union's victory 25 years ago. The European Solidarity Centre is a highly ambitious project, a new format for a cultural institution: it is not only a museum to promote awareness of the Solidarity movement and the anti-communist opposition in Poland and Europe, but also a centre for dialogue about the contemporary world."

Under the Patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland - Bronisław Komorowski
Curator - Sabine Weier
Project Management -

Anna Stelmaszczyk

Special Thanks to - Photographic Section at the European Solidarity Centre (ECS): Grażyna Goszczyńska, Kuratorin der Fotografiesammlung, Iwona Kwiatkowska, Ewa Konkel, Leszek Sieńczak

Photographers -

Piotr Babiński, Leszek Biernacki, Hans-Olav Forsang, Zdzisław Andrzej Fic, Sławomir Fiebig, Alfons Klejna, Jerzy Kośnik, Zygmunt Malinowski, Wojciech Milewski, Bogusław Nieznalski, Stanisław Składanowski, Leonard Szmaglik, and photographs from the private archive of Magdalena Wójcik-Sorby
Translations - Alice Schmid, Sabine Stekel, Lingua-World
Idea - Polish Institute Berlin
in cooperation with - the European Solidarity Centre (ECS)

The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, Director of the Polish Institute, Berlin: "The strikes centred around the NSZZ Solidarity trade union, led by Lech Wałęsa, ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A photograph or photo is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a ...