Current Art Exhibit

Brook Smart

Illustrations of Alice Kasai, Mignon Barker Richmond, and Sareph Young

Utah Women Making History 

Illustrations of Utah women who advocated for women and advance in their communities

April 12 – May 30, 2024

The year 2020 marked three significant women’s rights anniversaries:

  • Utahns commemorated the 150th anniversary of Utah women’s first votes when 25 women cast ballots in the Salt Lake City election on February 14, 1870. They became the first American women to vote under an equal suffrage law.
  • The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which extended voting rights to women in the United States when it was ratified on August 26, 1920.
  • The 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which provided needed protections for minority voting rights on August 6, 1965.

Utah women were at the forefront of the national suffrage movement in many ways, but the fight for women’s voting rights was just one step in a long list of rights that had to be gained. Even before the passage of the 19th Amendment, and especially since, Utah women have worked to better their communities in the arts, business, education, law, medicine, the military, music, writing, politics, religious and community organizations, science, sports, and more.

This exhibit, Utah Women Making History, includes Utah artist Brooke Smart’s illustrations of Utah women (and a few men) who worked throughout the 20th century to advocate for women and advance their communities. These 50 illustrations were commissioned by Better Days 2020, a nonprofit dedicated to popularizing Utah women’s history and spearheading Utah’s statewide celebrations of these significant anniversaries.

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