Past Exhibitions

The Sporting Woman: The Female Athlete in American Culture

13 April–1 August 2004

Winslow Homer Croquet Players

Coinciding with the 2004 U.S. Women's Open Championship, which was held at Mount Holyoke's Orchards Golf Course in the summer of 2004, the museum organized this special exhibition on the history of American women in sports. The installation presents a broad array of visual materials related to women's participation in exercise and sport from the mid-19th century to the present. Among the carefully selected images are Winslow Homer's Croquet Players (1865),a stunning portrait by Otto Bacher of his wife in tennis attire (1891), and Annie Leibovitz's powerful photograph of soccer player Julie Foudy (1996). Each is eloquently revealing about women in sports.

Croquet, one of the new games introduced after the Civil War, was among the first acceptable athletic activities in which women could participate. By 1900, genteel women participated in a wider variety of sports, including tennis. In fact, for those seeking exercise as well as recreation, it was the one of the fairly vigorous athletic games a woman could enjoy without being subjected to insinuations of "rompishness."

Annie Leibovitz Julie Foudy, Midfielder, Seminole County Sports Training Center, Sanford, Florida

Mount Holyoke College played a key role in developing sports programs for American women. When the school opened in 1837 physical exertion for women was discouraged, but founder Mary Lyon was adamant that exercise would be integral to the curriculum.

The history of exercise for women in the United States is interwoven with women's education. The Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections holds a treasure trove of photographs of students participating in athletics, dating from the 1860s to the present. One, taken in the late 1880s, for example, shows the Mount Holyoke Nines outfitted in their baseball uniforms, among the first for women in the United States. Visitors will be amazed to see the abundance of wool that was worn by Mount Holyoke students while participating in gymnastics classes during the first decades of the 20th century.

The college continues to play a prominent role in women's athletics. In 2000 Sports Illustrated for Women ranked Mount Holyoke number one among liberal arts college for women athletes.

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