Last week, I started this series about women who inspire me to help me shift my perspective. It's so easy to fret over the chaos in the world, lose track of the important stuff that really matters, and take a bigger-picture view. I made a list of 12 women who inspire me. I chose six women who are nationally known and six women who are local to Wichita. I encourage you to do the same.
In this second installment, I'm posting about women who are visionaries. They think outside the box to see new futures and possibilities and make them happen. It's not easy to break through the milieu of our mundane existence to look beyond tomorrow and see what life can be like in the future. Convincing other people to embrace these ideas of what could be and leading people toward a better future is not an easy task, but one that is the primary purpose of these influential innovators.
I have had the incredible fortune of working with several amazing visionaries over my lifetime. They share some interesting characteristics.
It may seem that their ideas are completely bonkers and that their vision will never become a reality.
They are hyper-focused on the end result and aren't going to let anyone or anything stand in their way.
Visionaries are usually better at coming up with all the ideas than actually pulling them off.
They need a strong team of people who can work out the details and stand up to them when their ideas jump the shark. Â
They have more ideas than are humanly feasible and will barely get one started when a new, sparkly idea hits their brain cells, and it's off to something new.
They are prolific workers whose brains never completely shut off.
Not all visionaries are good leaders, and they don't understand how their push to make changes can step on toes and hurt feelings.
Still, the innovations we can achieve by pursuing the dreams for a better tomorrow they conjure up are revolutionary. That's what makes it so hard. The idea of "if it's not broken, break it" is challenging when all we want to do is stay in our comfort zone. Even though change is good, it can be painful. But if we can learn to trust their vision and help them fly, there are no limitations to what is possible.
The two visionary women I'm writing about inspire me to open my mind to new possibilities and the importance one person can make in generations to come. They have had the moxy to dare to dream and the tenacity to pull the strings and make it happen. They are Louise Caldwell Murdock and Margaret Atwood.
Louise Caldwell Murdock
When I was a teen, I spent many hot summer days at the Wichita Art Museum. When the temperatures were too high to hang out at Riverside Park, my friends and I would ride our bikes to the museum to hang out in the air-conditioned splendor and lounge around looking at our favorite artworks. I have Louise Caldwell Murdock to thank for that.
In 1915, Mrs. Murdock made it her mission to ensure her hometown would have an art museum. Wichita's first interior decorator, Mrs. Murdock, returned home after studying design in New York, determined to bring art and culture to Wichita. She was renowned for designing the Wichita Carnegie Library. This building at 220 S. Main Street was Wichita's first library, which doubled as a building for art exhibitions. It was considered a temple of refined taste and culture. She coordinated every artistic and aesthetic detail of the library, including furniture selections, sunflower windows, lighting, and ornamental touches that can still be seen in the building today.
Mrs. Murdock died of cancer in 1915, just three weeks before the opening of the library. But, a few days before her death, she wrote her own will, providing for her heirs until their deaths and directing the remainder of her estate to establish a collection of art for the people of Wichita. She entrusted her friend and associate, Elizabeth Stubblefield Navas, with the task of acquiring and assembling the collection of American art – a gift to the city that would be dedicated to the memory of her late husband, Roland P. Murdock, business manager and partial owner of the Wichita Eagle newspaper.
Her foresight to provide the seed money and a capable person to carry out the work realized her vision of a world-renowned art collection of work by "American painters, potters, sculptors, and textile weavers." The museum opened in 1935 with art borrowed from other museums. Â Through the trust, Elizabeth Stubblefield Navas purchased the first work in the Murdock Collection in 1939 and continued until 1962, building the base of this collection, widely considered to be one of the most important collections of 20th-century American art.
I still love art museums and always try to include a visit when I travel to other cities. No matter how important or famous a museum is reputed to be, I can't help but compare it to our modest collection of over 10,000 pieces by some of the biggest names in art. Our museum always comes out on top. (See the collection here.)
Mrs. Murdock's vision to make art accessible in her dusty little Cowtown has impacted who I am and how I envision the world. Looking at the paintings by Edward Hopper, John Stewart Curry, Charles Russell, Mary Cassat, and other talented folk helped foster my love of arts and culture and the ability to see the world through perspectives.
Margaret Atwood
Many people have heard of Margaret Atwood after her book, The Handmaid's Tale, first published in 1985, became a hugely popular series on Hulu in 2017. But that was not my introduction to Atwood's work. The first book I read was Cat's Eye, an all too real account of the cruelty and shamed conformity of relationships between girls as they go from childhood into their teens. Reading this book in my 20s and realizing how these early friendships impact women's relationships as adults was a healing eye-opener that changed my point of view. I've been hooked on her writing ever since.
Margaret Atwood, a Canadian author born in 1939, is renowned for her feminist perspective and diverse literary portfolio, reaching audiences in more than 45 countries worldwide. With a collection of over 50 works, Atwood's writing includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. Her passion for writing surfaced at age five, and by 16, she had already set her sights on a career as a professional writer.
Atwood's literary repertoire transcends singular genres, delving into themes such as gender, identity, religion, myth, language's influence, climate change, and political intricacies. Drawing inspiration from myths and fairy tales, a lifelong fascination, her poetry reflects on human nature, the marvels of the natural world, and critiques of modern-day materialism. Themes of role reversals and fresh starts are common in her novels, focusing on women navigating their relationships with society and those around them.
Too many people try to categorize this visionary author as a science fiction writer. But Atwood prefers to think of herself as writing speculative fiction, giving her stories of a dystopian future a female point of view that contrasts with books in the same theme written by men where women are a convenience or afterthought. Her visions of the near future and what could happen are eerily close to reality, and she credits the author of Animal Farm, George Orwell, for "alerting me early to the danger flags I've tried to watch out for since. As Orwell taught, it isn't the labels – Christianity, socialism, Islam, democracy, two legs bad, four legs good, the works – that are definitive, but the acts done in their names."
When I first read The Handmaid's Tale, I thought it was ridiculous to believe that anything like this could ever happen in the United States in modern times after the progress made in women's rights. The past few years have shown just how naïve I've been in this assumption. Rather than imagining things that happen in Atwood's books can't possibly happen, we'd be better off taking her lead by being alert to the red flags her books teach us to watch for.
These two women remind me that being a visionary doesn't follow just one path. Mrs. Murdock was the kind of visionary who imagined the future of our community and what she could do to improve our city's quality of life long after she was gone. Atwood's shared visions are cautionary tales of what can happen if we quit paying attention, much like the original Grimm's Brother's fairy tales from her childhood that influenced her early in life. Both of these women use their creativity and influence to help us see beyond ourselves and inspire us to be more and explore our vision for a better world.
 Next week – Inspirational Women with Courage
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