New Flickr Commons Set: Mary Agnes Chase Field Books

This is one of a series of posts written in celebration of Women's History Month, and profiling additions of new images of female scientists added to the Smithsonian Flickr Commons. We invite you to subscribe to The Bigger Picture blog and to the Smithsonian Flickr Commons feed to keep up with new posts and image additions.

The celebration of formidable women on the Smithsonian Flickr Commons in honor of Women’s History Month continues. Today, we profile a new set of images from the Smithsonian Institution Archives’ collections curated and added to the Flickr Commons by our partners at the Smithsonian’s Field Book Project.

This new set of images featured above, Mary Agnes Chase Field Books, consists of images that document the field work of Mary Agnes Chase (1869-1963) and her long time collaboration with fellow botanist Albert Spear Hitchcock. In addition to being a botanist, and the foremost grass expert during her time, Chase was a women’s rights advocate and activist, and was even arrested for her political activities.

We’ve written about Chase in the past and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s Anthropology Department has a great online profile of her. However, this Flickr set adds a wonderful visual perspective to Chase’s career, and her field work around Brazil, Mexico, and the US. Many thanks to the Field Book Project for curating this set, and hop on over to their blog and to the Mary Agnes Chase Field Books set for more details on Chase’s career.