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Wall Street History Makes Room for Famous Women

Run Date: 08/24/09

By Kayla Hutzler

(WOMENSENEWS)--Do the names Victoria Woodhull, Hetty Green or Muriel Siebert ring a bell?

If not, the Museum of American Finance is ready to make them more familiar with the “Women of Wall Street” exhibit, which takes up one wall of its building at 48 Wall Street in lower Manhattan.

The exhibit, which opened June 9, runs through January 26, 2010.

It spotlights 10 female financiers.

Leena Akhtar, the museum’s director of exhibits and archives, presented the idea to the board last January, following President Barack Obama’s signing of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which strengthened the 1963 Equal Pay act.

Akhtar said the board approved the idea extremely quickly. Most museums, she said, take at least a year to create a special exhibit.

“The original intent was to first tell a story that doesn’t get told often and, secondly, to inspire, give advice and guide younger professional women who wish to join the financial world,” said Akhtar. She worked in the financial field at a brokerage company and then at a private management firm before coming to work for the museum.

Most of the featured women are historical, but one of them, Muriel Siebert, 77, is very much alive and spoke at the opening off the exhibit.

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