By Carrie Rowe
An exhibition showcasing Mormon women in history opened this week at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections gallery in the Harold B. Lee Library.
“What we”re talking about in the exhibition is connection,” said Connie Lamb, a woman”s studies librarian and co-curator of the exhibit. “We can connect to those women and understand their lives, and then they can impact our lives.”
“To Tell the Tale: Preserving the Lives of Mormon Women” features both prominent church figures and lesser-known women from the 19th and 20th centuries. Jennifer Reeder, a research historian and co-curator of the exhibit, said she hoped the exhibit would motivate people to preserve their own lives and record their experiences and feelings.
“I also hope it will motivate people to look at things in a scholarly way — to really critically examine who we are and what we are about as a people, as a Latter-day Saint people and as women in particular,” Reeder said.
The exhibition focuses on many ways women affected history, including displays on sister missionaries, education, nursing, politics and everyday life. Lamb said the exhibition represented only a few of the hundreds of collections from women available in special collections.
Reeder said much historical, sociological and religious research could be done, and there is much to learn from women of the past.
“Its difficult to describe the excitement you feel when you take out a manuscript and learn about someone,” Lamb said. “They come alive.”
The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute as part of the Women”s History Initiative, an effort to encourage scholars to discover the women that have been missing from our history. Reeder said the women of the Smith Institute have laid the foundation for us to look back on our history and put it into context.
Jessica Rodriguez, a senior from Spanish Fork who works in Special Collections, said the exhibit motivated her to learn more about the women from her past.
“It makes me want to go and really read my grandparents” journals,” Rodriguez said.
Wednesday”s opening, Jan. 21, commemorated the anniversary of Eliza R. Snow”s 200th birthday and was attended by past members of the General Relief Society presidency, as well as current first counselor Bonnie Parkin. The opening featured the first presentation in a lecture series that will continue throughout the exhibit, which runs through June 4.
“It”s a great way to celebrate Eliza by celebrating all of these other women, because she has had such an important impact on them,” Reeder said.
