“Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection” at the Grolier Club provides a first glimpse into the diversity and depth of the Lisa Unger Baskin’s collection of rare books, manuscripts, journals, ephemera, and artifacts on women’s history. In 2015, Baskin placed her collection of more than 10,000 with Duke University’s Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in the Rubenstein Library.

The phrase “women’s work” usually conjures up domestic duties or occupations associated mainly with women (teaching, nursing, housekeeping), but Baskin’s collection upends those assumptions by revealing that Western women have long pursued a startling range of careers and vocations. By bringing together materials from across the centuries, Ms. Baskin shows that through their work women have supported themselves, their families, and the causes in which they believed. Click here to learn more!