Exhibit: Fort Smith in Fact and Fiction These posters are one of the first things you see when walking into the museum. I find it interesting that between the two there is only one woman pictured and she is sexualized. Both of these movies came out in the late 60’s. When the movies were produced they had the option to give women a story as well, but from the look of these posters I would say they did not. Exhibit: Women Behind Bars Near the very back of the museum they had this exhibit “Women Behind Bars.” I completely looked over this exhibit at first. If you notice at the top of it is a picture of a group of men. I noticed the men and just assumed that’s what the entire article was over until I went back and actually read the entire thing. Exhibit: Lady Desperado All of the women that are in the exhibits who are named are named because they are criminals. Each one who is named their brother and father are also named. This exhibit is about Belle Starr. It
Exhibit: Belle Starr--Bandit Queen After viewing this photo, I realized that women maybe weren’t as incarcerated as commonly as men were. The caption states that the only time she went to jail was for one occasion of horse theft. I’m thinking that maybe people in that time didn’t see women criminals as serious threats to society as commonly as men were. Now that I think more about it, that’s probably a major advantage if you’re going to be known as a “Bandit Queen.” Exhibit: The Workings of the Court The thing that stuck out to me in this picture is that it was not ever often in that time for a woman to be in a major position of power. It seems like you would always see women in supportive roles rather than leadership roles. All throughout this exhibit we see several pictures of noteworthy men but not a lot of women. It is inspiring to me as I think about how far we have come today. Exhibit: The Gallows This correlates with the first picture pretty well. Hang