Mary Howland Smoyer: Women in Public Art in Boston and Beyond. Reception with light refreshments to follow.

Smoyer will tell the stories of women who have been honored with statues in Boston -- Harriet Tubman. Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, Abigail Adams. Lucy Stone, Phillis Wheatley and on Cape Cod -- Rachel Carson, Mercy Otis Warren, and Katherine Bates.

Sometime in the late 1980’s, a young girl was on a class trip walking Boston’s famed Freedom Trail. The girl, perhaps influenced by her mother’s feminist persuasion and observant of the personalities described on the Trail asked, “Where are the women?”

Indeed, where were the women? They were right there in front of our faces. Inspired by the child’s question, a group of Boston Public School teachers, librarians, and other educators constructed a list of hundreds of women with Boston roots or connections who had made contributions to society by virtue of their careers or volunteer work but had never been recognized. Thus was the genesis of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail!

Mary Howland Smoyerm has been actively involved in the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail since it was founded in 1989. Mary has worked as a librarian and teacher in public and private schools for over 30 years. She is co-author of the guidebook Boston Women's Heritage Trail: Seven Self-Guided Walks through Four Centuries of Boston History, now in its third edition.

This talk is presented by The Guild of the Cape Cod Museum of Art.