Smithsonian Launches Augmented Reality Project Bringing Five Women to the National Mall
The National Mall now has room for five more historical figures, at least in augmented reality. The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum has introduced “Unhidden Heroines,” a new project that uses QR codes and digital overlays to place women’s history directly into one of the country’s most symbolic public spaces.
Beginning June 18, visitors with a smartphone or computer can summon virtual monuments to Julia Ward Howe, Polly Cooper, Mary Katharine Goddard, Elizebeth Smith Friedman, and Dorothy Height. Each figure is paired with an existing memorial to a better-known male historical figure nearby, creating a layered encounter with the Mall’s familiar landscape. Height appears beside the MLK Memorial, while Howe is linked to the Lincoln Memorial. Goddard, paired with Thomas Jefferson, is identified for publishing the first official signed copy of the Declaration of Independence.
The project is part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum’s broader effort to center women’s history on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The museum was established by Congress in 2020 after more than two decades of advocacy. At the time, officials expected the institution to take roughly 10 years and cost about $375 million to bring to fruition, and the museum’s website still says it will be “at least 10 years” before a building opens to the public.
“Unhidden Heroines” is available in two forms: an interactive version for visitors on site and a non-interactive version for those viewing remotely. The experience will run through Dec. 31, closing out America’s 250th birthday year.
In a place where national memory has long been expressed through bronze, marble, and scale, the Smithsonian is using a lighter, more flexible medium to ask a familiar question in a new way: whose stories have been left just outside the frame?
