The Brandywine River Museum of Art re-opened this month after its forced coronavirus closure.
And two exhibits planned earlier for this year are finally on display.
Amanda Burdan is the curator for Votes for Women: A Visual History andan accompanying photography exhibition, Witness to History: The Selma Photography of Stephen Somerstein.
Burdan says Votes for Women examines imagery of the suffrage movement and how the suffragists spread their message.
She notes the exhibition also feels connected to the present day MeToo Movement.
“I’ve gone through on a few tours already with groups and they’ll point out phrases, slogans, passages and texts and they say, 'That is just like today,'" said Burdan. "And so we start out the exhibition with visuals and artifacts from a very famous march that happened in Washington, D.C. on inauguration weekend, but in 1913.”
Burdansays Witness to History follows the struggle for voting rights into the 1960s, picking up the story with a crucial moment in the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. It features 55 photographs from the historic 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
“His photographs follow the very last day of the civil rights march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965," said Burdan. "And that was one of the primary forces behind the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Witness to History: The Selma Photography of Stephen Somersteinis on display until November, 1, 2020. And Votes for Women: A Visual History runs until September 27, 2020.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
