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New-York Historical Society to Open Women’s History Center

A rendering of the glass staircase in the Tiffany Gallery, adjacent to the planned Center for the Study of Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society.Credit...Eva Jiricna Architects

The directors of the New-York Historical Society did not have to search hard for evidence that the role of women in history has long been underplayed. Within their own museum examples surfaced: the Tiffany lamps that were thought to have been the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany and his male designers.

Actually, scholars discovered a decade ago that Clara Driscoll, director of the Tiffany Studios’ women’s glass cutting department, and her staff, known as the Tiffany Girls, produced many of the most prized and valuable lamps, including those with insect and flower motifs, like the “Wisteria” and the “Dragonfly.”

“That made us think about the relationship between women and objects in our own collection and, by extension, women more generally,” said Louise Mirrer, the society’s president and chief executive. “We started to think about how we could better display the lamps in the context of this discovery as a permanent feature.”

One result of those deliberations is to be announced on Thursday, when the society unveils plans for a new Center for the Study of Women’s History, which will be devoted to women’s history exhibitions and scholarship.

The center will be on a redesigned fourth floor, adjacent to a new glass gallery designed by the architect Eva Jiricna that will feature the society’s significant Tiffany lamp collection.

The renovation of the floor — the overall name of which will remain the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture — is to cost $31 million. The city has contributed $10.8 million, and the society has raised the rest privately. In 2011, the society reopened after an extensive $65 million renovation that closed part of the museum for a year.

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“New York Women in a New Light” will be a 15-minute immersive film for the New-York Historical Society’s planned Center for the Study of Women’s History.Credit...Donna Lawrence Productions

The 1,300-square-foot women’s center gallery is to be named for Joyce B. Cowin, a philanthropist who donated $1 million. Along with the 3,000-square-foot glass gallery (featuring a transparent staircase and 100 illuminated Tiffany lamps), the women’s history center is to open in early 2017.

Organized and curated by Valerie Paley, the society’s vice president and chief historian, the center will present two to three exhibitions a year, alternating between historical and art-focused installations.

“We want to incorporate women’s stories into the larger narrative,” Ms. Paley said, “to broaden our understanding of the past.”

Other institutions focus on women’s artistic contributions, such as the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. The historical society says it is one of the first institutions to devote permanent space to women’s-history exhibitions and scholarship.

Planned events include an inaugural show on the role of American women in the 18th century in helping to create the first modern democracy and an exhibition that focuses on women and the Progressive movement of the 19th century.

The center also plans to explore subjects ranging from women’s suffrage to the modern women’s movement. “Notions about women’s rights are the product of particular historical circumstances,” Ms. Paley said. “There is no single women’s history but women’s histories.”

An interactive wall, called “Women’s Voices,” will explore women’s words and actions, encouraging visitors to participate by sharing their own stories.

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Clara Driscoll of Tiffany Studios’ women’s glass cutting department (with Joseph Briggs around 1901) was featured in a historical society show.Credit...Department of American Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A 15-minute immersive film, “New York Women in a New Light,” will use screens and projections on the ceiling and walls of a new auditorium and feature women like Eleanor Roosevelt; the writer Zora Neale Hurston; Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet secretary; and Margaret Sanger, the birth control activist. The space also will be used for teacher workshops, classes and small conferences.

In addition, the society will hold an annual Conference in Women’s History, the first of which is scheduled for March. It will focus on the female-dominated garment industry, covering subjects like production, shifting work force demographics, the role of female organizers and labor unions.

In addition to honoring Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, the new glass gallery — curated by Margaret K. Hofer, the society’s vice president and museum director — will explore the history of Tiffany Studios, its marketing of luxury goods and the impact of electricity on Americans at the beginning of the 20th century.

The society will also establish three Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Women’s History; help host an online course on women and work, taught by Alice Kessler-Harris, a Columbia University history professor; and develop educational resources and opportunities for kindergarten through 12th grade on-site and online on the history of women’s labor and social reform in New York. A mobile app will offer a walking tour of historical sites in New York that welcomed or excluded women.

“We always look for unoccupied niches and parts of history that textbooks don’t accommodate,” Ms. Mirrer said. “We’re an institution that really hopes to tell stories that are less well known.”

Perhaps most important, Ms. Mirrer said, is that the center be understood as integral to the society’s overall mission of conveying history about New York and the nation.

“The one goal we have is to make it clear that visiting all of the pieces and parts of our new center will not be an optional visit, like, ‘I’m interested in women’s history, so I’ll go there,’ ” Ms. Mirrer said. “If we had only women visiting this center, that would be a failure for us.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Looking Back on the Past of Half of Humanity. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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