By Renee Batti
Almanac News Editor
It’s international in scope. Its mailing address is San Francisco.
But the International Museum of Women was born on the Midpeninsula — launched in 1985 in Palo Alto as the Women’s Heritage Museum.
Conceived as a “museum without walls,” the WHM produced exhibits in various venues, hosted public programs and provided teacher resources for classroom programs during Women’s History Month, among other projects.
When it moved to San Francisco in the late 1990s, the museum extended its reach to embrace women worldwide, and to reflect its ambitious new vision, it was renamed the International Museum of Women.
Although many people think of the past when they hear the word “museum,” the movers and shakers at the women’s museum have quite another idea.
“As museums evolve throughout the world, they’ve become not only places to keep historical information and exhibits, but also a place where current issues can be presented in a non-threatening way and from all points of view,” notes Bettie Steiger of Menlo Park, who serves on the museum board of directors’ executive committee.
With the museum, she says, the board, staff and volunteers are “trying to illuminate women’s history and, at the same time, we’re trying to amplify the voices and the contributions of women all over the world — not just from a U.S. point of view, but from a global point of view.
“The whole approach of the museum is to provide a place where women can focus on … the issues that are holding women back in the world, and what we can do to create a world that’s free from gender inequality.”
The museum is still “without walls” — that is, its own space to display regular exhibits and hold public programs. A plan to obtain the 150,000-square-foot Pier 26 building, under the Bay Bridge, was dropped last year when it became clear that making it structurally safe to occupy would cost far too much, says Maureen Blanc, the museum’s vice president of marketing.
But from the museum’s buzzing offices on Howard Street, near the Embarcadero, 10 staff members, four regular volunteers and a handful of interns organize a quarterly speaker series, programs and exhibits in changing venues, and educational programs.
Karen Offen of Woodside is a key player in the museum’s educational projects designed for middle and high school classrooms. The curriculum emphasizes the impact history, art and culture have for girls and women globally.
A senior scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women & Gender and a museum board member since 1999, Ms. Offen also reviews the museum’s exhibits for historical accuracy.
In addition to carrying on with the museum’s current work, museum leaders are looking ahead at the range of benefits that a worldwide collaborative effort might achieve in behalf of women. Ms. Steiger is chairperson of the museum’s Global Council, which met for the first time last year and will meet again in June to work on the museum’s five-year strategic plan.
The council’s membership is impressive — “a wonderful, global powerhouse,” Ms. Steiger says. Among its members are Rajaa H. Dhaher Al-Khuzai, a former member of the Interim Governing Council of Iraq; Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland; Beatriz Merino, former prime minister of Peru; Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada; Barbara Barrett, former deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration; Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers of America; and playwright and human rights activist Eve Ensler, whose play, “The Vagina Monologues,” has fired up audiences across the globe.
The council, says Ms. Steiger, “is providing ongoing advice and guidance as to how to make sure that this museum is a global museum — giving us input from various cultural points of view.”
Although museum leaders are disappointed that the Pier 26 site is no longer possible as a museum space, they will continue looking for walls to call the museum’s own. But for the short term, the museum will look to mount more virtual exhibits to follow Paula Goldman’s innovative “Imaging Ourselves” project launched this week, says Ms. Blanc.
