WASHINGTON, D.C.- From media moguls Katharine Graham and Oprah Winfrey to eBay President Meg Whitman and salon founder Elizabeth Arden, 40 of America’s most successful businesswomen will be featured in Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts until Feb. 29, 2004. Women from the Colonial era to the end of the 20th century, including cosmetics pioneer Madam C.J. Walker, movie producer Mary Pickford, and aircraft manufacturer Olive Ann Beech, will be represented by over 350 documents, photographs, artifacts, and video portraits.

Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business is organized by the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Mass.

The exhibition and its national tour are made possible by generous support from Ford Motor Company and AT&T. Both companies have also provided support for the exhibition’s presentation in Washington, D.C.

Additional support is provided by the Cabot Family Charitable Trust with in-kind support from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Local presentation is funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services by an Act of Congress and Hecht’s. Education programs are held in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress.

According to NMWA Director Judy L. Larson, “The remarkable stories of the enterprising women in this exhibition offer inspiration for women today who are striving to succeed in the top levels of business. The women’s museum is an appropriate place to celebrate their accomplishments.”

The exhibition at the women’s museum will also feature works from its permanent collection in a special installation showcasing business success stories of 19th- and 20th-century American women artists, from Sarah Miriam Peale (1800-1885), the nation’s first highly successful female portrait painter, to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), perhaps American’s best-known and most-beloved modernist. In addition, an installation in the Library and Research Center will explore the works of American women who thrived as professional illustrators of books, magazines, and advertisements.

The women featured in the exhibition understood the value of a good idea, found the capital to finance it, assembled the team to implement it, launched the advertising campaign to market it, and ultimately built a profitable enterprise. They are from different centuries, backgrounds, and regions of the country. But they all owned their business ventures and earned sizable fortunes and widespread public recognition for their day. They understood that entrepreneurship, not just a job in the workplace, was the route to economic freedom and independence.

Yet even the most successful women entrepreneurs share experiences that distinguish them from their male counterparts. They faced severe restrictions and limitations – legal and institutional discrimination, cultural restrictions, and challenges of work and family. Eighteenth-century married women had no legal right to own property; 19th-century women could not vote; early-20th-century women were excluded from the elite business schools and large corporations that redefined modern business; and women today receive little venture capital and continue to collide with the glass ceiling.

For many enterprising women, business ventures occurred in relationship to, not independent of, their roles as daughters, wives, widows and mothers. Marriage shaped the lives of most. It made business easier for some, like Myra Bradwell and Ida Rosenthal, who started ventures with their husbands; it intruded on others, like Madam C.J. Walker and Elizabeth Arden, who divorced their husbands and continued their businesses.

Traditional ideas about femininity and a woman’s proper place forced women entrepreneurs to straddle two worlds. Historically, when women launched enterprises, they typically created businesses geared specifically to women. Ellen Demorest created and marketed paper dress patterns just as the sewing machine became an indispensable item in middle-class houses, while Lydia Pinkham sold herbal medicines that promised relief from women’s ailments. Helena Rubinstein and Madam C.J. Walker created cosmetic companies that turned women’s beauty into big business. Jennie Grossinger established a resort that offered leisure to families. Even today, Oprah Winfrey took women entrepreneurs’ long-held commitment to social reform and self-improvement and marketed her television show, magazine, and book club to an audience in search of a better world.

There were always those women, though, who bucked tradition to enter into typically male enterprises. Mary Katherine Goddard was a newspaper printer who printed the first copy of the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signers attached, Hetty Green was such a successful investor on Wall Street that she earned the reputation of the “richest woman in the world,” and Olive Ann Beech ran Beech Aircraft in World War II and led the company into the space industry. In the last quarter of the 20th century, spurred by the women’s movement of the 1970s, increasing numbers of women have challenged the status quo by seizing opportunities to make their mark in male business arenas.

Linda G. Alvarado has ventured into two such arenas – she owns a major Denver construction company and the Colorado Rockies baseball team. Today women own 40 percent of American firms.

Historian for the exhibition is Virginia G. Drachman, professor of history, Tufts University; the curator is Edith Mayo, curator emeritus, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. NMWA coordinating curator is Susan Fisher Sterling, deputy director for art and programs. A companion catalogue by Drachman has been published by the University of North Carolina Press in association with the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. It is available in the NMWA Museum Shop for $27.95. Following NMWA, Enterprising Women will travel to the Los Angeles Public Library May 9 – Sept. 19, 2004, and the Detroit Historical Museum Oct. 18, 2004 – Jan. 9, 2005.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University is a scholarly community dedicated to the creation, dissemination and support of new knowledge. Within this broad purpose, the Radcliffe Institute sustains a continuing commitment to the study of women, gender and society. The Institute’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, well known for its collections on the history of American women, is a primary resource available to all and attracts scholars from all over the world. For more information about the Radcliffe Institute, visit www.radcliffe.edu

The National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Mass., is dedicated to presenting exhibitions on a wide variety of topics in American history and popular culture. The museum is supported by the Scottish Rite Freemasons in the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States. For more information about the National Heritage Museum, visit www.mohn.org.