The Sporting Woman:
Insights From Her Past
Exhibition Statement
This show presented historic visual images that document the varied sports in which every day western and nonwestern women participated from antiquity to 1930.
These pictures illuminate how ordinary women spent their leisure time, their expectations and their restrictions, as well as their sporting and athletic accomplishÂments. Often, the only evidence for women’s history was the visual representation of their daily lives as documented by the art of their time.
In demonstrating the range of women’s sporting achievements from the past, the exhibit reinforced and validated the sporting activities of contemporary women, underlining the universality and timelessness of women’s personal need for physical expression.
