Queens rep champions national women’s history museum
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U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents Western Queens, is leading an initiative to build a Smithsonian Women’s History Museum in Washington D.C. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File.
By Victoria Merlino
After two decades, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s dream of creating a national women’s history museum may be inching closer to reality.
Maloney announced last month that her bill to create the Smithsonian Women’s History Museum had passed the 290-sponsor threshold and was moving toward a House vote. There is no museum in the country dedicated to women’s history, according to a fact sheet released by Maloney, and only five percent of the United States’ approximately 2,400 national monuments honor women.
If built, the museum would be located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
“For me, it is hard to see how anyone could oppose legislation that will inspire the next generation of American leaders by telling the stories of American women who have shaped our nation,” Maloney said in a statement.
New York City will place a statue of Billie Holiday near Queens Borough Hall as part of the city’s She Built NYC initiative. Photo by William Gottlieb via the Library of Congress.
In 2014, Congress passed Maloney’s bill to create a Congressional Commission to evaluate the need for a women’s history museum. In 2016, the commission recommended that a women’s history museum be built.
“It took nearly 20 years to pass a bill just to create a Congressional Commission to study whether a museum should be built — but I refuse to let it take that long for us to commit to building it,” Maloney said. “There is no reason this bill should not be supported by every member of the House and Senate. Women are half the population. This is not about politics or partisanship. This is about giving women –— all women — their rightful place in history.”
The newest Smithsonian museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was established by Congress in 2003, and opened to the public in 2016. The museum documents the history of African-Americans in the United States.
Maloney’s quest for a women’s history museum coincides with a New York City initiative called She Built NYC. The city plans to build five statues of women to correct a major disparity between the number of statues honoring men and women in the five boroughs.
The city announced that it plans to build another round of She Built NYC statues in the near future.
