Moab Museum celebrates Utah women who made history in monthlong pop-up

MOAB, UTAH (ABC4) — Outside the Moab Museum on Tuesdays during March, you’ll be met with a display of vibrant illustrations and stories highlighting Utah women who enacted change and made history.

The pop-up will be open every Tuesday this March for Women’s History Month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be different women featured each time, which gives visitors a chance to come back and learn something new each week.

Utah women make history

Some of the women you can learn about in the exhibit include Zitkála-Šá — a writer, musician, and activist who fought for Native American civil rights. There’s also Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, the first female state senator in the United States, who also led the way for women as a skilled physician, avid suffragist and progressive public health reformer.

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Another is Hannah Kaaepa, activist and community leader, who traveled with Utah Suffragists to Washington, D.C. where she spoke to the National Council of Women to advocate for Hawaiin women’s rights.

These are only a few of the profiles that will be at the pop-up, which was put together in collaboration between the Moab Museum and the Utah Women’s History Initiative, a project associated with the Utah Historical Society.

Mary Langworthy, the public programs manager with the Moab Museum, shared that it’s important to learn about and remember the legacies these women left behind.

“Women’s history is relevant to everybody’s history. Sometimes in history what gets preserved, the public records, the photos, the written histories, tend to skew to include more stories from men, but women have a tremendous impact on why the world is the way it is,” said Langworthy. “I’m glad to be a part of sharing these stories from the state’s past and connect people today with these trailblazing women who helped get voting rights, helped break gender barriers and create more opportunities for women that we get today.”

The Utah Women’s History Initiative, where the information and illustrations of these women come from, was started to educate others about the women of the Beehive State who worked to make a difference in their communities and the world around them.

Katherine Kitterman, the coordinator of the initiative, explained the process that went behind creating the profiles of these women.

“We met with either descendants of the person or family members or sometimes historians who had studied their life or the people who are leading in their communities today,” Kitterman said. “It was a fascinating opportunity to dive into what they had done. Sometimes there wasn’t a lot of information to go on in the historical record about these women. Sometimes we were relying on the information and the memories from family and other folks who could share that, but we would go back and forth and work with them to find out as much as we could about the story,” she said.

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Kitterman said the details of the illustrations, made by local artist Brooke Smart, capture a moment in time that help to tell the story of each woman.

“What the woman is wearing, what she’s holding, the setting that she’s in, or the items in the background can really all help to illustrate those pieces of her story and the ways that she has used her voice to shape our state,” Kitterman said.

Kitterman shared they’re excited to partner with the Moab Museum to further share these stories about these remarkable women.

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