The Spring 2020 evening lecture series will highlight the wide-range of the Avenir Museum’s current exhibition: “R.E.S.P.E.C.T. the Dress: Clothing and Activism in U.S. Women’s History“, in honor of the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Everyone is welcome to attend this intriguing array of textile topics throughout the semester. The museum is located at 216 E. Lake Street, and lectures will be held in room number 157. The lecture starts at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Guests are encouraged to arrive early to view the galleries in the museum, which remain open for extra hours between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. on lecture evenings.

Suffragists’ Political Style

On Thursday, March 12, Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, will present Fashioning Women’s Rights: Suffragists’ Political Style and its Visual Legacies. Rabinovitch-Fox teaches courses in American culture and history, fashion, consumer culture and politics, and women’s and gender studies at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. She will discuss women’s uses of fashion as a means of negotiating new freedoms and of expressing modern political and gender identities, and how questions of beauty and appearance were an important part of feminist struggles and ideology during the twentieth century.

Upcoming Lecture

On Thursday, April 23, join us for a fascinating guest presentation by staff from The Molly Brown House Museum, We Will Not Be Denied, on the local Colorado suffrage movement and Margaret’s involvement in the national movement at the turn of the 20th century, as seen through the evolution of women’s apparel 1900-1920. How a woman of 1920 dressed was very different from how a woman of 1900 dressed, and hemlines weren’t the only things that were contentious. Not only were women fighting about whether bustles were in or out, but they were also fighting for the right to vote. Suffragists used clothing strategically to make statements about their radical message, and prominent Denver socialite and philanthropist Margaret “Molly” Brown (1867-1932) was one of them. Free and open to the public.

The Avenir Museum is part of the Department of Design and Merchandising in CSU’s College of Health and Human Sciences.