Before we close out Women’s History Month 2025, I’d like to highlight an exhibit I recently experienced at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. It illustrates—literally and definitively—groundbreaking contributions by women from ancient times to the present. The exhibit features 287 portraits by Anita Kunz, an award-winning illustrator, who conceived the project during the COVID lockdown. The resulting portraits are of famous, and many lesser-known women, who have made their mark in the fields of science, politics, activism, the arts, education, and invention.
Illuminating Subjects
Titled ORIGINAL SISTERS: PORTRAITS OF TENACITY AND COURAGE, the massive display is spread throughout several galleries. Accompanying wall text provides insight into each woman’s story. The magnitude of Kunz’s work is evidenced by the careful research she conducted about each of her subjects, a significant undertaking considering how little information was available on some of the women.
I was thoroughly engrossed. Taking in the portraits, I admired the way Kunz incorporated “trademarks” significant to her subjects. For example, Kunz rendered the women’s names within their portraits in different fonts and styles that evoked the time period in which the women lived or their area of impact. We see tree limbs weaved into environmental activist Rachel Carson’s name; singer and songwriter Sister Rosetta Tharpe holding her guitar; young climate activist Greta Thunberg sporting a crown of flowers, ferns and butterflies; the chalkboard background for Dorothy Cotton signifying this civil rights activist’s role in education.
Unwavering Courage
While much of the imagery within the portraits reflects successes, others feature horrifying ones. There is the blood-stained palm print on Anna Mae Aquash’s face that speaks to her murder. She, along with other Indigenous women, came to violent ends because of their protests on behalf of Canadian and American Indigenous people’s equal rights. The portrait of St. Æbbe the Younger, who died in 870, shows her nose partially cut away and bleeding. According to legend, she mutilated herself, thinking this might spare her from sexual assault by Viking warriors and instructed her fellow nuns to do the same. While the nuns seemed to avoid individual assault, the Vikings set fire to the abbey, and sadly, all the occupants burned to death.
Inclusive History
Reading about so many brave, accomplished women was both fascinating and inspiring, with the wealth of stories reflecting a diversity of creatives, warriors, athletes and politicians. I spent the afternoon getting reacquainted with well-known historical figures like Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and who sought a major party’s nomination for president, and Florence Nightengale, who founded the world’s first nursing school in 1860. Nina Simone, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ruby Bridges and Malala Yousefzai were among other familiar names. More eye opening though, was learning about the unknown women of courage and grace and their many accomplishments. I’d bet very few of us are aware of ophthalmologist and inventor Patricia Bath, Ni Gusti Ayu Raka Rasmi, a Balinese dancer, Stella Young, advocate for the disabled, or pioneering feminists Olympe de Gouges and Huda Shaarawi.
History has traditionally slighted the accomplishments of innovative, creative women, who more often than not, experienced repeated hostility and sexism, yet ultimately triumphed despite these significant obstacles. Through her extensive research and care, Kunz draws our attention not only to the women familiar to us, but she also shines a spotlight on those we haven’t had an opportunity to yet meet. The exhibit draws these bold women trailblazers out of the shadows of obscurity into the light of recognition and respect. In the Foreword to the exhibit’s companion book, author Roxane Gay writes that ORIGINAL SISTERS offers, “possibility and promise… You will be introduced to many of these women for the first time, because history is rarely kind to women until it is forced to be.”
The exhibit, which opened in November 2024, runs through May 26, 2025. It is a fitting tribute to women’s continual resilience in facing down challenges, emerging from the shadows and finally taking their rightful place among individuals who made and changed history. Where one sister rises, so do we all.