Smithsonian women’s museum launches augmented reality experience after congressional setback

In June, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum launched its first augmented reality project, “Unhidden Heroines,” on Washington, DC’s National Mall, running through 31 December as part of US semiquincentennial programming. The free mobile experience presents four-part interactive stories about five under-recognised American women at specific monuments, including Dorothy Height at the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial and Julia Ward Howe at the Lincoln Memorial. The launch follows a congressional setback a month earlier, when the US House of Representatives rejected a bill to designate a museum site after amendments by Republican lawmakers excluded transgender women and would have given President Donald Trump effective veto power over the location. Interim director Melanie Adams said the AR project allows the museum to “be on the Mall in a virtual way” while it awaits a permanent site; the museum and the National Museum of the American Latino were authorised by Congress in 2020.

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