Women of the West

Seeing Women in the West at the Museum of the American West gallery guide

The Women of the West Chair at the Autry is the fruit of the 2002 merger between the Women of the West Museum in Boulder, Colorado, and the Museum of the American West (formerly the Autry Museum of Western Heritage). The Autry National Center embraces the prospect of creating scholarly initiatives, exhibitions, and public programs that draw on state-of-the-art research on women and gender and which highlight the impact of diverse women’s experiences on the history of the American West. “Seeing Women in the West” is a gallery guide detailing women’s themes at the Museum of the American West, please click here to download.

Women of the West Chair
Virginia Scharff

Virginia Scharff is Women of the West Chair at the Institute for the Study of the American West and Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. She edited Seeing Nature Through Gender (2003) and has written numerous works of history, including Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (1991) and Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (2003). Scharff also writes suspense novels under the name of Virginia Swift, including Brown-Eyed Girl (2000), Bad Company (2002), and Bye, Bye, Love (November 2004). At the Institute, she works with Museum of the American West curator Carolyn Brucken to develop exhibitions and programs about women and gender, including West as Home, scheduled for installation in March 2007.

Past Women of the West Exhibitions

“This Shall be the Land for Women”

Mexican American women factory workers, 1922. Los Angeles Public Library

Women of the American West led the nation and the world into the struggle for female voting rights, known as the “suffrage movement.” This remarkable suffrage success story began in 1869, when Wyoming Territory approved full and equal suffrage for scarcely one thousand women. Contagious excitement for women’s rights spread quickly across the Rocky Mountain landscape. “This Shall be the Land for Women!” cheered western journalist Caroline Nichols Churchill upon Colorado's stunning victory by popular vote in 1893.

Collaborations: Drawn Together

Washtub Blues by Alison Saar. One of four prints created for Expanded Visions: Women Artists Print the American West.

The first version of this exhibit, Drawn Together: Women Make Art in the American West, was produced by the Women of the West Museum with support from Xcel Energy Foundation. The table top exhibit, configured as a large, elegant, canvas book, premiered at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, in Boulder, Colorado. The exhibit subsequently toured Colorado, presented at the Durango Arts Center, the Loveland Museum and Art Gallery, and the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center (Pueblo).

The Lodo Mural Project

This exhibit was a part of a larger public program that took place from January through September 2000 at 16 Market Street, in downtown Denver, Colorado. Across from a central bus station, along a busy corridor in an area known as LoDo, or Lower Downtown, a 250 foot long mural introduced passers-by to some of the many women who have contributed to Colorado history.

There are No Renters Here

Uriah and Mattie Oblinger with daughter Ella. Courtesy of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Oblinger Family Collection.

There are No Renters Here - Homesteading in a Sod House. In 1862, The United States government passed the Homestead Act, which opened up much of the West for settlement by U.S. Citizens. Land taken from American Indians—by means of war, treaties, and trading—was declared “public domain.” Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, The Homestead Act of 1862 made it possible for many people to own land for the first time in their lives.

Butcher Scholar Award

The Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry National Center seeks applicants for the Butcher Scholar Award. Established in 2001 by the Women of the West Museum, the Butcher Scholar Award honors the vision, leadership, and generosity of Jane and Charlie Butcher. Each year, this award supports the work of a promising scholar whose project demonstrates innovation and creativity and whose product enhances a current museum initiative. The stipend will be up to $5,000, depending on the scope of the project. The results of the Butcher Scholar's work will then be featured at a public program at the Autry National Center and showcased on the Autry National Center website.

For 2005-2006, the theme for the Butcher Scholarship is "Frontiers of Women's History." We seek applicants whose work deals with new and emerging questions in the field of women's history in general, and Western U.S. women's history in particular, as well as those who study women's history in places of cultural convergence. Those places may be frontiers, as traditionally understood, as well as transnational borderlands. But we are also interested in a broader notion of convergence that encompasses other historical crossroads: cultural institutions, markets, twentieth-century cities, and sites of transportation and communication, for example.

A permanent endowment has been established to fund the Butcher Scholar Award. Individuals wishing to contribute to the endowment should contact Anna Norville, Director of Major Gifts anorville@autrynationalcenter.org, 323.667.2000, ext. 398.

About the Butcher Scholar Award Winners

This year’s Butcher Scholar Award winner is Michelle Nickerson. Nickerson holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University and is a Visiting Lecturer in the History Department at Southern Methodist University. Her dissertation, Domestic Threats: Women, Gender and Conservatism in Cold War Los Angeles, 1945-1966, examined the role of grassroots women’s activism in the Los Angeles area as a crucial force in the creation of the Cold War conservative movement. The Butcher Scholar Award will enable Nickerson to turn her dissertation into a book, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right. Nickerson will present her work at the Western History Workshop in May 2005.

From left to right: Jane Butcher, Jackie Autry, and 2003 Butcher Scholar Award Winner Mary Casey

Los Angeles playwright Mary F. Casey won the 2003 Butcher Scholar Award for her proposal, Wide Open Spaces: Alternate Stories of the American Wests. Utilizing the Autry Library’s research archives and recent Western scholarship, Casey’s final project was a full-length play interweaving history and myth through five generations of three nontraditional Western women and their families. A staged reading of Wide Open Spaces was held in the Autry National Center’s Wells Fargo Theater in May 2004.

Application Procedure

Applications for the 2005 Butcher Scholar Award must be received by April 29, 2005.

Applications should include the following: Project description. Provide a detailed description of your proposed project, including focus, work plan, relevance to public audiences, final product(s), and timeline. This project narrative should be no more than three single-spaced pages, on 8.5-x-11-inch paper. Résumé. Describe your qualifications in a Résumé no more than two pages long. Include information about previous experience, scholarly exploration, or interests relevant to your project. Two letters of recommendation from persons familiar with your qualifications to design and complete your proposed project. These letters should be sent directly to the museum. Name, address, phone, fax, and e-mail address of the applicant. Send three copies of your application to:

Butcher Scholar Award
Virginia Scharff, Women of the West Chair
Autry National Center
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462

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