Museums should honor the everyday, not just the extraordinary | Ariana Curtis

48,901 views ・ 2019-01-18

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00:13
Representation matters.
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Authentic representations of women matter.
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I think that too often, our public representations of women
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are enveloped in the language of the extraordinary.
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The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire:
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Madam C. J. Walker ...
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The dresses of the first ladies of the United States ...
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Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to seek
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the US Democratic party's presidential nomination --
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(Applause)
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As a museum curator,
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I understand why these stories are so seductive.
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Exceptional women are inspiring and aspirational.
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But those stories are limiting.
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By definition, being extraordinary is nonrepresentative.
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It's atypical.
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Those stories do not create a broad base for incorporating women's history,
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and they don't reflect our daily realities.
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If we can collectively apply that radical notion
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that women are people,
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it becomes easier to show women as people are:
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familiar, diverse, present.
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In everyone's everyday throughout history,
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women exist positively --
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not as a matter of interpretation, but as a matter of fact.
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And beyond a more accurate representation of human life,
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including women considers the quotidian experiences
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of the almost 3.8 billion people identified as female on this planet.
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In this now notorious museum scene from the "Black Panther" movie,
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a white curator erroneously explains an artifact
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to Michael B. Jordan's character seen here,
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an artifact from his own culture.
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This fictional scene caused real debates in our museum communities
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about who is shaping the narratives and the bias that those narratives hold.
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Museums are actually rated
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one of the most trustworthy sources of information in the United States,
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and with hundreds of millions of visitors from all over the world,
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we should tell accurate histories,
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but we don't.
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There is a movement from within museums themselves
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to help combat this bias.
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The simple acknowledgment that museums are not neutral.
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Museums are didactic.
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Through the display of art and artifacts,
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we can incite creativity and foster inclusion,
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but we are guilty of historical misrepresentation.
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Our male-centered histories have left our herstories hidden.
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And there are hard truths about being a woman,
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especially a woman of color in this industry,
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that prevents us from centering inclusive examples of women's lives.
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Museum leadership:
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predominantly white and male,
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despite women comprising some 60 percent of museum staffs.
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Pipelines to leadership for women are bleak --
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bleakest for women of color.
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And the presence of women does not in and of itself guarantee
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an increase in women's public representation.
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Not all women are gender equity allies.
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In the words of feminist theorist bell hooks,
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"Patriarchy has no gender."
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Women can support the system of patriarchy
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just as men can support the fight for gender equity.
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And we often downplay the importance of intersectionality.
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Marian Anderson was one of the most celebrated voices of the 20th century,
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and the Smithsonian collected her 1939 outfit.
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After the white Daughters of the American Revolution denied her access
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to sing in Constitution Hall, because she was black,
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she famously sang instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
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to a crowd of over 75,000 people.
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And in libraries all over, including museums,
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you can still find the groundbreaking 1982 anthology, entitled
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"All the Women Are White,
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All the Blacks Are Men,
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But Some of Us Are Brave."
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Demands for the increase of women's representation
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does not automatically include Afro-Latinas like me ...
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or immigrant women, or Asian women, or Native women,
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or trans women, or undocumented women,
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or women over 65, or girls --
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the list can go on and on and on.
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So what do we do?
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Targeted initiatives have helped incorporate perspectives
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that should have always been included.
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I arrived at the Smithsonian through a Latino curatorial initiative
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whose hiring of Latinx curators,
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mostly women, by the way,
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has raised the profile for Latinx narratives across our institution.
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And it served as a model
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for our much larger Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative,
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which seeks to amplify diverse representations of women
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in every possible way,
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so that women show up,
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not only in the imagery of our contemporary realities,
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but in our historical representations,
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because we've always been here.
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Right now though, in 2018, I can still walk into professional spaces
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and be the only --
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the only person under 40, the only black person,
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the only black woman, the only Latina,
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sometimes, the only woman.
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My mother is African-American and my father is Afro-Panamanian.
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I am so proudly and inextricably both.
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As an Afro-Latina, I'm one of millions.
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As an Afro-Latina curator, I'm one of very few.
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And bringing my whole self into the professional realm
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can feel like an act of bravery,
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and I'll admit to you that I was not always up for that challenge,
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whether from fear of rejection or self-preservation.
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In meetings, I would only speak up
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when I had a fully developed comment to share.
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No audible brainstorming or riffing off of colleagues.
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For a long time,
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I denied myself the joy of wearing my beloved hoop earrings
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or nameplate necklace to work,
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thinking that they were too loud or unscholarly or unprofessional.
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(Laughter)
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I wondered how people would react to my natural hair,
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or if they viewed me as more acceptable or less authentic when I straightened it.
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And anyone who has felt outside of mainstream representations
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understands that there are basic elements just of our everyday being
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that can make other people uncomfortable.
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But because I am passionate
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about the everyday representation of women as we are,
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I stopped presenting an inauthentic representation of myself or my work.
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And I have been tested.
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This is me pointing at my hoop earring in my office --
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(Laughter)
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Just last month, I was invited to keynote a Latino Heritage Month event.
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The week of the presentation, the organization expressed concerns.
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They called my slides "activist,"
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and they meant that negatively.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Two days before the presentation,
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they requested that I not show a two-minute video affirming natural hair,
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because "it may create a barrier to the learning process
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for some of the participants."
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(Laughter)
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That poem, "Hair," was written and performed by Elizabeth Acevedo,
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a Dominican-American 2018 National Book Award winner,
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and it appeared in an award-winning Smithsonian exhibit that I curated.
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I canceled the talk,
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explaining to them that their censorship of me and my work made me uncomfortable.
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(Applause and cheers)
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Respectability politics and idealized femininity
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influence how we display women
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and which women we choose to display.
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And that display has skewed toward successful and extraordinary
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and reputable and desirable,
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which maintains the systemic exclusion
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and marginalization of the everyday, the regular, the underrepresented
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and usually, the nonwhite.
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As a museum curator, I am empowered to change that narrative.
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I research, collect and interpret objects and images of significance.
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Celia Cruz, the queen of Salsa --
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(Cheers)
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yes -- is significant.
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And an Afro-Latina.
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The Smithsonian has collected her costumes, her shoes,
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her portrait, her postage stamp
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and this reimagining ...
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by artist Tony Peralta.
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When I collected and displayed this work,
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it was a victory for symbolic contradictions.
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Pride in displaying a dark-skinned Latina,
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a black woman,
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whose hair is in large rollers which straighten your hair,
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perhaps a nod to white beauty standards.
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A refined, glamorous woman in oversized, chunky gold jewelry.
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When this work was on view,
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it was one of our most Instagrammed pieces,
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and visitors told me they connected with the everyday elements
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of her brown skin or her rollers or her jewelry.
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Our collections include Celia Cruz
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and a rare portrait of a young Harriet Tubman ...
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iconic clothing from the incomparable Oprah Winfrey.
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But museums can literally change
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how hundreds of millions of people see women
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and which women they see.
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So rather than always the first or the famous,
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it's also our responsibility to show a regular Saturday at the beauty salon,
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the art of door-knocker earrings ...
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(Laughter)
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fashionable sisterhood ...
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(Laughter)
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and cultural pride at all ages.
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Stories of everyday women
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whose stories have been knowingly omitted from our national and global histories.
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And oftentimes in museums, you see women represented by clothing
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or portraits or photography ...
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but impactful, life-changing stories from everyday women
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can also look like this Esmeraldan boat seat.
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Esmeraldas, Ecuador was a maroon community.
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Its dense rainforest protected indigenous and African populations
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from Spanish colonizers.
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There are roads now,
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but there are some parts inland that are still only accessible by canoe.
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Débora Nazareno frequently traveled those Ecuadorian waterways by canoe,
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so she had her own boat seat.
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Hers personalized with a spiderweb and a spider,
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representing Anansi, a character in West African folklore.
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Débora also sat on this seat at home, telling stories to her grandson, Juan.
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And this intangible ritual of love
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in the form of intergenerational storytelling
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is common in communities across the African diaspora.
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And this everyday act sparked in Juan the desire to collect and preserve
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over 50,000 documents related to Afro-Indian culture.
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In 2005, Juan García Salazar, Débora's grandson,
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and by now a world-renowned Afro-Ecuadorian scholar,
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traveled to Washington, D.C.
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He met with Lonnie Bunch, the director of the museum where I work,
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and toward the end of their conversation,
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Juan reached into his bag and said, "I'd like to give you a present."
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On that day, Débora Nazareno's humble wooden boat seat
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became the very first object donated
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to the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
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It is encased, displayed and has been seen by almost five million visitors
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from all over the world.
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I will continue to collect from extraordinary historymakers.
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Their stories are important.
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But what drives me to show up today and every day
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is the simple passion to write our names in history,
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display them publicly for millions to see
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and walk in the ever-present light that is woman.
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Thank you.
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(Applause and cheers)
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