Currently on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a show at the Costume Institute titled “American Woman:  Fashioning a National Identity.”  The curators combined the costumes transferred from the Brooklyn Museum with the Met’s own collection to chart the evolution of women’s fashion, body type and evolving place in society from the end of the 19th century to contemporary times.  There are several archetypes that serve to elucidate these changes and they are presented chronologically in successive galleries:  The Heiress, The Gibson Girl, The Bohemian, The Patriot & Suffragist, The Flapper, The Career Woman and The Screen Siren.  In each category, both the clothes and the set designs in which they’re placed are beautiful reminders of artistry and craftsmanship of the highest order.  An image eventually emerges of the 20th century woman who is active, athletic, physically fit, career oriented, adventurous and thoroughly appealing.  The exhibit ends with a massive photo-montage of famous and mostly recognizable women who have made their mark throughout the past century in various ways.

     Of the 108 women pictured, almost 80 are from the spheres of fashion and entertainment.  This is understandable since the women who succeed in these fields tend to be highly photogenic to begin with and the Costume Institute is focused on fashion and its icons.  Of the remaining 30 women who made the cut, there are two tennis players, four first ladies, two ambassadors, two supreme court justices, a handful of artists and photographers, an aviatrix, one professional feminist, a smattering of socialites and philanthropists and a small group of women who bridge several categories (Caroline Kennedy, for one, can fit socialite, philanthropist, political activist and American royalty).  The question is what standards were used for inclusion in this wall of fame and how fairly does this represent what the curators claim to be a national identity.

     Despite the category of “career woman,” some of the professions in which women have made an enormous mark are strangely omitted.  There are no writers despite our having boasted two Nobel laureates (Pearl Buck and Toni Morrison) and dozens of women who have achieved lasting literary significance (Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, to name a few);  no women doctors or scientists (Gerty Radnitz-Cori, the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for medicine in 1947, Rosalyn Yalow in 1977, Bernadine Healy, the first woman to head the National Institute of Health in 1991); no pathfinders like Margaret Mead, Margaret Sanger or Sally Ride; no major entrepreneurs (Aerin Lauder is there but not her grandmother Estee, or Helena Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden or Martha Stewart).  Among the accomplished missing are Claire Booth Luce, Condoleeza Rice, Ayn Rand and Laura Bush - all noteworthy for their achievements and for not being democrats in a mural where only Sandra Day O’Connor and Nancy Reagan leap out as token reds in an otherwise blue landscape. Barbara Bush didn’t make the list though she holds the distinction of being the only 20th century woman to be first lady and first mother (not to mention the pre-eminent popularizer of pearls).

     The introduction to the exhibition proclaims, “For the American woman, physical and fashionable appearance became a primary vehicle through which she expressed social, political, economic, and even sexual emancipation and emerged as a spirited symbol of progress, modernity and ultimately Americanness.”  A later wall text concludes, “Indeed, taken together, the diverse sensibilities epitomized by mass media depictions of the American woman of 2010 personify America’s essential principle of E pluribus unum - Out of many, one.”

     Interestingly, no American woman was depicted more frequently in the mass media from 2009-2010 than Sarah Palin, vice-presidential candidate, former governor and former beauty contestant for Miss Alaska, whose physical attractiveness and personal style were no small aspect of her mass appeal.  Criteria that would allow for ignoring Palin while including such second tier celebrities as Tina Chow, Patti Hansen and Michelle Williams are difficult to fathom or explain.  Her exclusion from this exhibit can only be interpreted as a glaring political statement that contradicts the stated precept of diversity and e pluribus unum.  At worst, this omission shows off a small-minded snobbery that diminishes its curators;  at best, it is inappropriate at a grand museum that seeks to welcome the public at large and claims to speak about our national identity.

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