Treasures: Trailblazing Women Through History

By NYPL Staff
February 28, 2022

To celebrate Women’s History Month, this guide features some of the items on view in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures that demonstrate the barriers women have broken and spaces they have made for themselves in the arts, sciences, literature, politics, and more through innovation, creativity, and advocacy. The items here highlight women of color, queer women, abolitionists, suffragists, feminists (and proto-feminists), thinkers, pioneers, and icons whose contributions revolutionized and redefined their fields and society at large. These represent only a portion of the objects on display in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, presented loosely in the order in which they are organized in the Polonsky Exhibition.

collage of archival materials
collage of archival materials
collage of archival materials
collage of archival materials
collage of archival materials