Solicitation_NIHLM2017910-UHP_Exhibition_Design_Creative_Services_-_Attachment_D_Design_Notes_02_02_2015_Confronting_Violence.pdf

Exhibition Program

Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives

Special display, traveling banner exhibition, and online exhibition

February 2 2015

Design notes

Background

In 2012, the National Library of Medicine acquired a manuscript collection from Daniel

Sheridan, then professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. Sheridan was one of the pioneering nurses who were responsible for changing the way the medical profession identified and treated patients, primarily women, who were ba ttered by domestic partners.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Dan Sheridan, Jacquelyn Campbell, who is professor at JHU School of Nursing, also, and other nurses were able to make the connection that domestic violence was a medical issue and not just a pr ivate or legal problem. These nurses did the research, developed guidelines, published protocols, and successfully advocated for change.

Using the Sheridan manuscript collection as the foundation, Confronting Violence:

Improving Women’s Lives chronicles the work of Sheridan, Campbell, and others to improve women’s lives. The exhibition positions these nurses’ story within the larger framework of the history of advocacy for women’s rights.

Exhibition introduction statement

Over the past 200 years, activists and reformers in the United States have recognized the harm of domestic violence and sought to improve the lives of women who were battered.

During the late 20th century, nurses took up the call. With passion and persistence, they worked to reform a medical profession that largely dismissed or completely failed to acknowledge violence against women as a serious health issue.

Beginning in the late 1970s, nurses were in the vanguard as they pushed the larger medical community to identify vict ims, adequately respond to their needs, and work towards the prevention of domestic violence. This is their story.

Design Goals

Background

Throughout history, campaigns for women’s rights have taken on many different “looks.” During the 1970s, feminists took to the streets in protests and demonstrations, speaking out, carrying signs, advocating for change. The energy and vibrancy of these actions is evident in photographs of the period.

The nurses who witnessed the effects of domestic violence on patients and campaigned for change using words. Their words comprised data reports, protocol descriptions, published guidelines, peer-review articles, etc. Nurses used the power of words to persuade, convince, and demand new conclusions and new responses. Their words changed the medical profession and improved women’s lives .

Visual/emotional goal

Visitors will be inspired by the work of the nurses in this story to take action to prevent and stop violence against women.

Visual challenges

There are a number of visual challenges with the assets that comprise this project. The assets are primarily textual in nature. Objects are limited. Images of people , either portraits or at events, are few. In addition, we have the responsibility not to objectify or r e-victimize the women who have been battered or sensationalize abusers’ actions.

Suggested strategies

Embrace the perceived challenges and make them work for us:

1. Use text as a design element. A handful of pages from various assets are scanned and available to use as texture, subliminals, or to reinforce messages. (specific images called out below)

2. Use mood images (or find other photographs from 1970s/1980s) of nurses to represent every nurse.

3. Use the absence of real location images to create a sense of space through suggestion (cities, domestic interiors, hospitals) .

4. Use exhibition typeface, color, texture to suggest time (1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and today)

Prohibition

The only prohibition is not to slip into clichéd representations of battered women or abusive men.

Banner 1

The mood of the introductory banner should signal to visitors that, while this is an exhibition that chronicles the work of generations of activists to improve women’s lives , the real work to make change (as told by this show) can best located in the text of the assets on display.

Banner 2 / Case 1

This section of the exhibition suggests 1) the long history of the problem of domestic violence, and 2) efforts to confront that violence beginning from about 1850 to the 197 0s. In many ways, this section has the strongest visuals—19th century cartoon, photographs of people and marches, and books with bold graphic covers.

Because this level of graphic excitement is not sustained across the exhibition, the design challenge will be how to integrate these assets with an overall look and feel for a show that is very textual in nature.

Banners 3 / Cases 2 + 3

This section tells the story of nurse researchers and activists who first saw the connection between their work treating women who were battered and the possibility/responsibility of medicine playing a bigger role in confronting domestic violence. Up until this point in time, medical professionals did not probe patients’ explanations about how they sustained injuries. Doctors did not think twice about sending battered women back to dangerous situations without resources or help to make change possible.

This aspect of the story is told through the studies, reports, protocols and resources developed by the nurse activists.

Banners 4 / Cases 4 + 5

After about 10 years of nurse activists researching, publishing, networking, and advocating, the medical establishment began to shift its views. This section chronicles some steps when attitudes began to change. The Surgeon General’s conference on violence in 1992 is a watershed event in the history of the movement. Following that conference, the medical profession began to develop training about ways to detect, monitor, treat, and share resources with patients who had been battered.

Banner 5 / Cases 6 + 7

The last section of the exhibition includes pivotal documents that show the codification of the medical profession’s responsibility to identify victims provide remedial intervention for patients who have been abused.

The section also suggests the mission to end domestic violence extends beyond the hospital into communities around the world. . .where ever individuals are being battered by partners. Here the assets shift to include messages of support and empowerment of victims.