Bryn Mawr History

January 2021-December 2021
Canaday Library, Lobby

- Sally Brown
- Uméko Tsuda
- Hilda Worthington Smith
- Enid Cook

This exhibit names and celebrates four individuals who helped shape the College’s first 50 years. Some of these names may be familiar, but their contributions to the College may not be. By their work and their conviction, they expanded educational opportunity for women at Bryn Mawr and beyond, even if that opportunity had been denied or made more difficult for them. They changed the lives of students, the nature of the College, and higher education and scholarship. They helped to build Bryn Mawr.

November 5, 2021-June 3, 2022
Canaday Library and locations around campus

This exhibition highlights the ways in which Bryn Mawr students in the 1960s used ideas and experiences influenced by the national Civil Rights movement to shift the culture of the College. It was organized by Keyla Benitez (Class of 2024), Emma Burns (Class of 2021), Bankston Creech (Class of 2022), Elliot Fleming (Class of 2022), Carolina Molina (Class of 2023), and Katy Rosenthal (MA Candidate) with faculty advisors Ignacio Gallup-Diaz (Marjorie Walter Goodhart Professor of History) and Monique Scott (Director of Museum Studies and Associate Professor of History of Art.

September 16, 2022 - December 16, 2022
Canaday Library, Class of 1912 Rare Book Room
Weekdays 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

This student-organized exhibition explores the earliest years of the College from its conception in 1872 and the laying of its foundations in 1879 to its opening in 1885 and through its first decade of operation. It was organized by Tessa Famatigan (Class of 2024), Marion Hamilton (Class of 2023), Rhian Muschett (Class of 2023), Madison Wyttenbach (Class of 2023) with academic co-advisors Alicia Walker (Professor of History of Art) and Alexis White (M.A. Candidate, Department of History of Art).

Perry House was originally envisioned as an African-American student residence and cultural center. In response to protests by Black Bryn Mawr students, Perry House—formerly “Spanish House”—opened in 1972. It operated from 1972 to 2013 when it was taken offline as a student residence. Because there are few records about Perry House and Perry House residents, we risk losing access to this crucial part of our history. The Perry House Oral Histories Project seeks to build a collection of oral histories related to Perry House and its affiliated communities.

This project connects current Bryn Mawr students with graduates, faculty, and staff who were part of the larger Perry House community. We aim to grow our collective understanding of past graduates’ contributions to and experience of Bryn Mawr College. This project will fill in the missing pieces of our collective history, particularly pieces—and people—that have been invisible or overlooked before now.

The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, during its time on campus from 1921 through 1938, hosted about a thousand women working in manual labor and the industrial sector, redefining what it means to be a Bryn Mawr student and radically changing the playing field of worker's education. Here, some of the first working class Jewish, immigrant, and Black students were allowed to both attend classes on Bryn Mawr's campus and graduate. The Summer School's evolving and vibrant history is one intrinsically tied to the history of Bryn Mawr College; even a century on, its presence has a profound resonance with the conversations we as an institution hold. For Roses, Too is an exhibit that seeks to connect today's students to the ongoing legacies of the Summer School on the centennial of its founding, drawing attention to not only the overarching themes of the Summer School's history, but also the nuance of the students' lives on campus and the ways in which Bryn Mawr affected their lives and outlook on the world.