Women's History

Marguerita Mergentime’s designs for printed table linens are perpetual conversation starters. This self-taught New York City-based textile designer used museums as her education and, in some cases, her inspiration.

In honor of Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday and our Day of Courage celebration earlier this year, the education team at The Henry Ford has developed a special educational activity book for children that focuses on social innovation and the way the civil rights moments.

Through mid-April 2026, the What We Wore exhibit in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation presents a look at fashion magazines and catalogs.

In the mid-1980s, the multi-hyphenate artist and filmmaker Lillian Schwartz began to promote the computer as a tool capable of solving age-old mysteries in art history, architecture, and archeology.

A new exhibition in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation’s Collections Gallery – Handmade: The Crafting of America – opens to the public on March 21, 2026. This exhibit features stories from the rich 250 years of craft in America. As March is Women’s History Month, here are some highlights of the contributions of women in craft in our collections and in the exhibition.

In 1972, Lillian Schwartz sat down with a bundle of pipe cleaners. She tested their flexibility, twisting them into loose loops and serpentine figures. Lillian was an artist, and often used unconventional materials in her work--but these pipe cleaner

What do the Andrews Sisters’s 1938 hit song, “Ti-Pi-Tin,” and Dinah Washington’s Grammy-winning 1959 recording of “What a Difference a Day Makes” have in common? Both songs were written by Maria Grever, a female Mexican composer.

How should we answer the question, “Did women do farm work?” In the time periods and regions interpreted at the working farms of Greenfield Village – here we examine the Daggett, Firestone, and Mattox family farms – men typically worked in the fields

Starting in the Reconstruction Era, multiple generations of the Mattox family would live in the Mattox Family Home, a farmhouse located in Bryan County, Georgia. Grace Mattox’s story gives us a unique glimpse into what labor looks like for an African

In June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge was hard at work. At the Palo Alto Stock Farm in Stanford, California, the photographer positioned twelve cameras along the side of a racetrack