Events
& Exhibitions

Throughout the 20th century, the marketing and design of menstrual products often stigmatized menstruation as an unmentionable bodily affliction. Menstruation was wrapped in euphemism: that time of the month, a weakness, a nuisance. “Feminine hygiene” products offered sanitation, invisibility, and freedom—but at what cost? Out for Blood: Feminine Hygiene to Menstrual Equity shows how marketing and social norms around menstruation create a cultural construct with power to shape people’s lives. 

This interactive exhibition—anchored by wall-sized graphics from the Center for Comic Studies’ graphic guides to the US healthcare system and democracy—includes a library of over 80 comics spanning the genres of memoir, historical narrative, graphic novel, and informational guide. The comics included in this exhibition illustrate who has the power to make decisions about our lives and our health, and how those decisions affect individuals and communities over time, often determined by class, race, gender, and zip code.

The Age of Roe exhibition examines the political, cultural, and societal landscape of reproductive and women’s rights in America. It reevaluates the legacy of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision through the work of those who have defined the debate about reproduction in the past five decades and uplifts stories of women, people of color, and communities that have been affected by the ruling.