A portrait of Marilyn Monroe appears in the "Women of our Time" exhibiton
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - The "Women of our Time" exhibition of 90 images is "a real panoply of women's identity, struggles and achievements in the 20th century," said museum director Martin Sullivan.

All the photos, taken from the museum's own collection, capture the moments and attitudes that symbolize the women portrayed in them.

"This exhibition is a source of inspiration, with a lot of rich stories," said curator Ann Shumard.

Among the first photos in this exhibition is that of Helen Keller, the extraordinary campaigner for disabled people's rights, who was deaf, dumb and blind herself.

The exhibition also includes images of great music artists of the last 80 years, including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Joan Baez.

Rock 'n' soul singer Janis Joplin is captured by photographer Linda McCartney at her height in 1967.

The women are "photographed doing the things they do," said Shumard.

A 1917 photo of birth control activist Margaret Sanger captures her iron-clad determination to push through the country's first family planning clinics, even at the expense of a prison sentence.

Rosa Parks changed the course of American history, by refusing to give up her bus seat
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Julia Child, who brought French cuisine to American tables through books and a television show, is surrounded by sausages inside a grocery store, while Althea Gibson, the first African-American woman to compete on the world tennis tour and the first to win a Grand Slam title in 1956, is captured teaching inner-city kids her skills at an improvised tennis court on a Harlem street.

Civil rights heroine Rosa Parks is immortalized just months before she made headlines, and changed the course of American history, by refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama.

Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe is also represented, in a photograph taken by a soldier when she sang for US troops in Korea in the 1950s, a concert she described as "the best thing that ever happened to me."

"I never felt like a star before in my heart," she told a friend about the moment.

"It was so wonderful to look down and see a fellow smiling at me."

The exhibition is open from Friday until February 1, 2009.

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