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Texas Woman’s University gets Women’s Museum archives

The archives and artifacts from Fair Park’s Women’s Museum, including Geraldine Ferraro political buttons and Betty Boop nesting dolls, have found a new home at Texas Woman’s University in Denton.

Three Texas universities offered a spot for the collection of documents, photographs and artifacts, but the board unanimously chose TWU, said Ann Abbe, interim chief executive of the museum.

“It was a good fit,” Abbe said Wednesday, because the two institutions have “complementary missions.”

The museum — officially called the Women’s Museum: An Institute for the Future — was forced to close in October because of funding problems. It had worked with TWU in the past on exhibits and programming.

The university’s Woman’s Collection, which is housed at the Blagg-Huey Library, already has about 78,000 books, 1,000 manuscript collections, 50,000 photographs, 2,000 journals and 1,000 oral histories about women, said Kimberly Johnson, coordinator of special collections.

TWU “is a pre-eminent research center of women’s history,” Johnson said, “so this seemed a natural; it seemed like the right home.”

The university took possession of the archives in recent weeks. They include documents, photographs, and artifacts such as posters, plates and political campaign buttons.

Some of the museum’s collection was given to other organizations before the move to TWU, Abbe said.

A collection of prints by photographer Annie Leibovitz and an exhibit on women in religion went to the National Women’s History Museum, to be built in Washington, Abbe said.

The Dallas Historical Society also received some items, including a carving of former Gov. Ann Richards, and the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas was given a historic uniform and a register of Scouts who visited the museum over the years.

Items that had been on loan were returned to their owners.

“Our goal was to do it right,” Abbe said. “If we were going to close, it needed to be done … in the right manner.”

Abbe, who took the reins of the struggling institution last summer, said closing was the right decision.

“It’s very sad,” she said, but there “is a sense of people coming together to do a job well done.”

When the museum closed last fall, supporters talked about continuing as an institute that offered women’s programs. But after researching the idea, the board decided last month to shut down completely, Abbe said.

“That concept was not sustainable right now,” she said. “So we are going to close the doors not just to the building but literally to the entity.”

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