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Egan celebrates 'gutsy gals'
We're talking, of course, of Maria Mitchell and her peers, whom the Egan Foundation is commemorating in their summer exhibit: "Gutsy Gals: From the Hearth to the Heavens, Maria Mitchell and her Sister Nantucketers." The Maria Mitchell Association, Nantucket Atheneum (where Mitchell once worked as a librarian) and the Nantucket Historical Association are co-sponsoring the exhibit, which runs from Friday through Columbus Day, seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (A $5 ticket purchase will get admission to the Maria Mitchell House, the observatory on Vestal Street and the Nantucket Lifesaving Museum at any time.)
Most of us know Mitchell as the first female in the United States (and second in the world) to discover a comet, the first admitted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first appointed faculty member at Vassar and a co-founder of the suffragist American Association for the Advancement of Women. But the exhibit reveals sides of the lady astronomer with which some may not be familiar. The main exhibit room, for example, contains a lifesized tableau of Mitchell's dome at Vassar where Mitchell held parties for her students at the end of the school year. "One of the requirements of the dome parties was that Maria wrote poems about her students, and they all wrote poems about one another," Finger said. "The dome parties became very popular on campus and they're a perfect representation of that sense of humor and love and creativity Maria had. I thought this was an important thing to highlight for the exhibition." Stacey Fusaro painted the dome's backdrop and included a cardinal, because Mitchell was a lover of the natural world, and because her father's favorite color was red. The tableau's focal point is the Alvin Clarke telescope Mitchell used there, which is on loan from the Maria Mitchell Association. The exhibit boasts relics and letters of Mitchell's remarkable associations, including Benjamin Franklin (Mitchell's cousin), Sofia and Nathaniel Hawthorne (Mitchell's close friends and fellow travelers), Elizabeth Peabody (Mitchell's patron) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Mitchell's peer in the women's rights movement). Finger, who also curates for the Maria Mitchell House, was integral to the exhibit - able to procure holdings that have been "stashed away in drawers at the archives and can't come out at the Mitchell house, which is without heat or electricity." "It gives me the opportunity to share things that only I get to see," Finger said. Other artifacts are on exhibit at the Mitchell House, but can be seen better in the Egan display. One of these pieces includes a "Juvenile Inquirer" - a small newspaper that Mitchell, as a child, would write up every Saturday on two pieces of paper and distribute to friends and family. It includes poems, stories ("The Orphans, Cont.") and even, bless her heart, a Real Estate section. "One thing that many people don't know about Mitchell is that she had a great sense of humor," said Finger, who included a sketch of Mitchell's back side from the 1850s. "A girl at a party asked if Maria would pose for her, and so Maria said, 'yes,' and then turned around," Finger said. "That was also very Maria. She could be a little down on herself. She didn't exactly think she was the best looking girl." Mitchell's sense of humor made her a hit at home, according to Finger. "She was the favorite sibling, because she made up great games and told funny stories to her brothers and sisters." The Mitchells were "an incredibly close family" of 12 - two parents and 10 children. (Nine lived to adulthood.) Mitchell discovered the comet in the apartment she shared with her parents on the second floor of the Pacific Bank building at the top of Main Street. Her father was the bank's primary employee. Mitchell, unmarried and without children, cared for her parents until their deaths, even bringing her father with her to Vassar, where he died in 1869. The exhibit includes many images of Maria with her father. A separate room of the exhibit is dedicated to Maria's peers, predecessors and successors - including the women of Petticoat Row, the Atlantic Silk Company, the Atlantic Straw Company, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Anna Gardner, Eliza Starbuck Barney, Hannah Cook Boston, Dorcas Honorable, Eunice Ross and Mary Coffin Starbuck (the mother of Quakerism on Nantucket). "Because Maria lived in such a unique place and because she was influenced by the place she lived, I wanted to talk about other Nantucket women as well," Finger said. "I think Maria would have wanted that, but also, again, because of Quakerism and the isolation and whaling, Nantucket was vastly different. While Maria was an amazing woman, she grew up in an environment in which her abilities and her talents and her wanting to learn were nurtured, not just by her family, but by the community as well." Also remembered in the show are several, more contemporary women of equal grit, including Madaket Millie, who looks not at all amused while being photographed (in a skirt!) outside her island outpost, with signs extolling its place as a Coast Guard Auxiliary unit and ice cream store. Grace Henry, who was the first female lawyer on Nantucket, was also the first woman to serve on a draft board during World War II, according to the exhibit. The first female senior chief of Nantucket's Brant Point Coast Guard Station, retired Chief Sheila Lucey, is the most recent woman included in the exhibition. Of course, it's easier to do something "first" on an island, with its limited population, but this exhibit contends that this island engenders a pioneering spirit in its women. The entire show is predicated on the understanding that women on Nantucket lived differently - and still do. "The women are amazing. What they did, they might have done elsewhere, but this environment definitely supported them," Finger said. "GUTSY GALS" OPENING RECEPTION When: Thurs., May 24, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. Where: Coffin School, 4 Winter Street Cost: Free I Please, RSVP for the opening, 228-2505. |
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