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by Bari Nan Cohen '90
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lizabeth Colton ’66 had an “a-ha!” moment in the early 1990s that led her to her current role as founding chair of the International Museum of Women. The mother of daughter Ashley Hongisto ’05, now 18, and son RJ Hongisto, now 22, Colton was trying to plan an outing with Ashley. “I wanted to take her someplace where she could experience her heritage as a woman,” Colton said. “But there was none. Most traditional museums reflect only the contributions of men. I thought, ‘We’re bringing our girls up to think we’ve never done anything important, and we’re bringing our boys up that way, too.’ ”
Colton couldn’t accept it. She wrote to anyone and everyone—from the Smithsonian Institute to Gloria Steinem—who might know of a women’s museum. No luck. Then she happened upon the Women’s Heritage Museum, a small outfit based in Palo Alto, not far from her San Francisco home. Founded in 1985, the museum’s mission was to make women’s history known. The group, which hosted an annual book fair and mounted small traveling exhibitions, quickly welcomed Colton’s offer to join them as a volunteer. Before long, she was on the board. “Over time, we became a resource for teachers, giving them materials they could use during Women’s History Month in March,” she recalls. “But as a small organization, we were not making a big impact.”
By 1997, Colton said, it was clear to her that the board needed to make a drastic move, and she led them in rethinking the entire mission of the museum. “We made the decision that we’d become a museum with walls, and we made the decision to be global,” she says. “We made the decision that we would be rooted in history but focused on the future.”
Colton describes what is now called the International Museum of Women as “an organization of issues and ideas.” But don’t be misled into thinking that only great thinkers and headline issues get airtime when the museum is planning an exhibit or symposium. “We made the commitment to be as much about everyday women as we are about the great inventors, doctors, and the like,” said Colton, now the founder and executive director. “We recognize them, but we also recognize the value of every woman and the contributions she makes to her community in raising children, in raising awareness.”
All of these ideas coalesce in a dynamic multimedia project titled “Imagining Ourselves,” (see below) set to open in March 2006, while the museum itself works toward building a permanent home in the San Francisco Bay area. The museum works with world organizations like the United Nations and the World Affairs Council, and with female leaders from around the globe as a clearinghouse to create what Colton calls “a community of achievement.”
“Even though we don’t yet have our permanent site, we do a lot of events locally and across the country, and women come and feel that sense of community, that sense of strength,” Colton said. “It happens on our Web site [www.imow.org] and it happens in the museum itself. We have so many volunteers that we log in over 1,000 volunteer hours every month.”
The growth and success of the museum, Colton said, have their roots on Mt. Ida. “Certainly, Emma Willard gave me the confidence and the skills to do what I do. The opportunities for leadership are a great advantage of the school,” she said. “It also gave me some level of consciousness about women and their role, and the value of women.”
The museum, in turn, gave her an increased connection to Emma Willard. “I don’t know if I really appreciated the community as much when I was there,” she said. “But now I see it as a gift to have this kind of sisterhood over the years.” It’s a sisterhood that pops up regularly in her life, perhaps most significantly, in the rediscovery of her former classmate Jane Wales ’66, president of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, and the keynote speaker at Emma Willard’s 191st commencement. “We found each other and reignited our friendship,” Colton said. Together, they are working to energize the global movement for women’s leadership.
Wales was the moderator for the museum’s last public event, the first Global Council meeting, in which 13 women—including the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson; the head of YWCA in Uganda; a Nigerian freedom fighter; and the head of a college in the Philippines—traveled to San Francisco to vist the museum and connect it with people in their home countries. “At the end we held a public forum with all 13 women,” Colton said. “It was a historic and important moment, but most of all it was amazing to see 400 people come away so inspired.”
Colton is dedicated to creating and adhering to a high standard of scholarship and discourse for the museum, which has created a special category of sponsorship, The Colton Circle, in her honor. A dedicated philanthropist, Colton sits on numerous boards, including the Board of Trustees at Emma Willard School. At last June’s commencement she handed Ashley her Emma Willard diploma.
“What a thrill! It was almost unreal to see her stand there, graduating from a place where she thrived and blossomed and was very happy,” Colton says. “Knowing she has the same platform I did, and knowing how much that platform gave me sustenance, it was really something.”
“What activates your generation?” This question prompted more than 3,000 responses in the form of art, poetry, and essays from around the globe for a new exhibit now under way at the International Museum of Women.
“These submissions spoke to who women think they are, and how they operate in the world,” said executive director and founder Elizabeth Colton. Ultimately, the exhibit will include a book, she explained, but for now it is primarily Internet-based, and includes four months of hosted chat rooms featuring celebrity speakers on topics about which women can write in. The last week of each month will be devoted to a topic on which women can take action. For instance, if one month is devoted to love and relationships, the final week will be devoted to discussions of how women can protect themselves from domestic violence, with action plans for how to get involved in the issue.
Colton says the IMOW is harnessing technology to unite women on topics like this. Although it seems like a lofty goal, she believes that it’s eminently achievable.
“Many women can now get access to the Internet, even if they don’t have a computer in their homes,” says Colton. “We found [that] if one person has a computer with Internet access, she shares it with a whole neighborhood, a whole community. And if someone working against female genitalia mutilation in Somalia now can hear how someone is doing that in South Africa, then that helps.”
Already the exhibit has attracted supporters in crucial areas. “We took a preview of this exhibit to the United Nations in March and signed up over 150 organizations globally to work with us and bring Imagining Ourselves to their countries,” said Colton. “After all, the Millennium Goals set by the UN are all women’s issues. [Only] one is women-specific, but if you’re talking about poverty, for instance, you realize that two-thirds of all the world’s poor population are women. It takes the power of women to bring peace, to end poverty.”
— Bari Nan Cohen '90 is a freelance writer and editor for several national magazines including More, SELF, and Plenty. She lives in Park City, Utah, with her husband and son.
This Serving & Shaping column appeared in the fall 2005 issue of EMMA.
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