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The college inaugurates the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center in September, honoring Hepburn (a 1928 graduate) and her mother, Katharine Houghton Hepburn (who graduated in 1899), for their contributions to women's rights.
The center will perform many functions designed to attract international visibility to the college and promote issues the Hepburn women held dear: the arts, civic engagement and women's health. The center will manage the Hepburn Fellows Program, which will invite professionals from around the globe to reveal the ins and outs of their progressive fields. The center will direct a Hepburn Scholarship and bestow the Katharine Hepburn Medal upon women who exemplify Hepburn's ambitious, free and gifted spirit.
"The story of the women in my family is truly the story of the women's rights movement," said Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's niece and Houghton Hepburn's granddaughter. Houghton is an actor and playwright living in New York City who played Hepburn's daughter in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
Houghton will speak at the inaugural gala Sept. 9 at the Kimmel Center, when actors Lauren Bacall and Blythe Danner will receive the Katharine Hepburn Medal.
"One of the things that we focused on were the passions these women had," said Michelle Francl, director of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center, who also serves as chair of the chemistry department. "At Bryn Mawr, we have women who are intensely committed to what they're doing."
The center will use space in Bryn Mawr's Dalton Hall.
"Students do significant things that make the world a better place," said college president Nancy Vickers. "We are so deeply grateful to the estate of Katharine Hepburn and her family who have been so excited about this."
Bryn Mawr College has spent years planning the center. Given the family's importance to women's rights movements and the significant role the college played in the lives of each woman, the marriage seems a perfect fit.
"[Katharine Houghton Hepburn] going to Bryn Mawr was her mother's dying wish," Houghton said.
Houghton Hepburn's mother made her promise that she and her two younger sisters, Edith and Marion, would go to Bryn Mawr. Edith graduated in 1901, Marion in 1906. Houghton Hepburn earned a master's degree in physics and chemistry from Bryn Mawr and another master's in art history from Radcliffe, Houghton said. Edith went to medical school at Johns Hopkins, and Marion became an architect, designing houses with women in mind.
The three sisters excelled in the man's world of the early 1900s. All the while, sisters fought for women's suffrage and women's reproductive rights, especially Houghton Hepburn, who founded and directed several suffrage organizations and helped found the American Birth Control League.
Being surrounded by opinionated, intellectual women, Katharine Hepburn became her own version of maverick as she entered the movie industry in which she would earn four Academy Awards.
"She absorbed the goals of the previous generation," said Houghton. "She was a pioneer of the movie business."
Hepburn chose films that represented the kind of women others could look up to.
"She supported her mother and other women in the political arena," said Houghton, but never got directly involved in the movement. Instead, she became the symbolic representation of what many women dreamed of during a time of limited opportunity.
"I think she provided hope and inspiration and courage for a whole new generation of women," said Houghton.
Houghton pursued regional theater in the infancy of its existence instead of following in her aunt's footsteps in Hollywood, where she found few worthy female characters. She has toured the country with more than 50 productions of classical drama and has won a Theatre World Award for her acting.
Visit www.brynmawr.edu for more information about the center.
