National Archives Museum: Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote Exhibit
Physical Site:
This exhibit makes the argument that American women gaining the right to vote was a long and complicated process that involved the hard work and sacrifice of many individuals over several decades. The physical design of the exhibit allows the visitor to experience first hand what were the struggles and obstacles that women had to overcome to get the right to vote by providing the opportunity to both read and hear first-hand accounts of suffragists and how they perceived their involvement. The exhibit takes a neutral stance on current political issues that involve voting choosing to present both sides of these issues.
The primary audience for this exhibit is the general public. In the exhibit space there are visitors of all ages and backgrounds. Visitors in the exhibit range from school aged children all the way to retired senior citizens.
The exhibit is primarily composed of primary source documents that includes petitions sent by suffragist organization to Congress demanding women be granted the right to vote, letters sent by suffragists to politicians, and the actual official certified copy of the 19th Amendment. All of the documents used in the exhibit relate to some aspect of the effort to secure voting rights for women in the United States. These primary source documents are supported by both written and video explanations that help to explain their significance to visitors.
The exhibit is divided into five thematic sections that each ask a question. These sections are organized to move roughly chronologically going from the late 18th century up until the present day. The five sections are: Who decides who votes?, Why did women fight for the vote?, How did women win the 19th Amendment?, What was the 19th Amendment’s impact?, and What voting rights struggles persist?. The exhibit is easy to navigate as there is only one way visitors can walk through the exhibit, ensuring that they view each of the different sections in a certain order.
The exhibit contains a few different interactive elements. One interactive consists of a game where the player has to navigate through a maze to try and get an amendment passed. Along the maze there are various roadblocks that stop the player from moving forward, these are representative of elements that can stop an amendment from advancing to become a law. The other interactive is a voting machine that the visitor can step into and vote on which current issues are important to them. Both of these interactives reinforce the purpose of the exhibit which is to look at the passage of the 19th Amendment and the establishment of voting rights for women.
Docents can be found in the exhibit when they have special events open to the public such as family days. They interact with the public by providing a variety of hands on activities that look to teach visitors to the exhibit about the women’s suffrage movement, the 19th Amendment, and the process of an amendment becoming law.
The one change I would make to the physical exhibit is to reorganize the lay out of the last section of the exhibit. In this part of the exhibit, it is not as clear which way the visitor is suppose to navigate. There is the possibility that the visitor could exit the exhibit before seeing the last section. I would redo the design so that the user had to go through the last section before exiting the exhibit.
Digital Presence:
The website for the exhibit, makes the argument that American women gaining the right to vote through the 19th Amendment was not a singular event or process. Instead, it involved the hard work and dedication of countless individuals over several decades. The design of the website reflects this argument by including several different topics and sections that the user can explore. The website allows the users to critically analyze and interpret the primary source documents that are used in the exhibit to tell the story of the 19th Amendment.
The primary audience of this website is the same as those that would go to see the physical exhibit, the general public. The website is designed to provide an overview and highlight key features of the exhibit for potential visitors to the museum. There are a variety of different resources on the website that appeal to a wide-ranging age group. In addition to being able to just explore the documents and artifacts that make up the exhibit, there are also lesson plans and activities that teachers can use in the classroom to teach their students about the 19th Amendment and women’s suffrage. The exhibit website makes the assumption that visitors on the website have no prior knowledge of the topics presented in the exhibit and provide detailed descriptions and background information on the 19th Amendment and the women’s suffrage movement.
The site is laid out with a main page that has the basic details of the exhibit. From this page the user can proceed to a variety of different pages that allow the user to interact with the content of the exhibit in a variety of different ways. The website can be a bit confusing to navigate. The user has to spend a bit of time searching through the different pages to find exactly what is on them and to find what they are looking for about the exhibit. There is not one single way to navigate the website. The user on website can move through a variety of different sections about the exhibit in any order they want.
The exhibit website allows the user to view the online exhibit and examine the primary source documents in each section, watch an introduction video about the exhibit, browse the featured documents of the exhibit, and to find related resources to the exhibit. The main difference between the online content and the physical exhibit, is that online the user can examine the primary source documents in much greater detail and the user has a much easier time actually reading the documents themselves online.
The website does allow the user to browse through the online exhibit. In this interactive element, the user is able to examine the primary source documents used in the exhibit and then read the explanatory captions that can be found next to the documents in the physical exhibit. This experience allows the user to examine the documents up close and read them for themselves to gain a greater understanding of the significance of the primary source documents included in the exhibit.
The exhibit website does include an introductory video where the exhibit curator Corinne Porter gives the viewer a brief overview of the exhibit, explaining the concept behind the exhibit, how the exhibit is laid out, and highlighting some of the most important artifacts in the exhibit. By having this video, the user on the website is able to gain a much deeper understanding of the message the exhibit is trying to convey from one of the most crucial individuals involved in the creation of the exhibit.
The one major thing I would change about this digital experience is the way the website is laid out. I would create a layout the included clear tap for the user to click on that indicated what each section of the website is and what the user can find in that section. I would also include at least a few of the videos found in the physical exhibit on the website. This would provide the visitor online, who cannot come to the physical museum, with as close to an in-person experience as possible.
