"That Exceptional One: Women in American Architecture 1888-1988" commemorated the 100th anniversary of the election of the first woman, Louise Blanchard Bethune of Buffalo, New York, to membership in The American Institute of Architects. The idea for this exhibition on a century of achievements by women came from the AIA Women in Architecture Committee.

The exhibit consisted of the following three sections: "Becoming an Architect" covered the establishment of schools of architecture in the United States during the late 19th century; the influence of the Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus movements; the political and social activism of the 1960s and 1970s; and the enrollment gains of women in architecture and other professional school. "Practicing Architecture" profiled women in professional practice-from the early all-female firm of MIT graduates Lois Lilley Howe, Eleanor Manning, and Mary Almy, to current and precedent-setting practitioners, Natalie De Blois and Laurinda Spear. It reflected a wide range of building types, practice types, specialties, and locales. " Gaining Recognition" used an illustrated timeline to document the evolution of women in architecture as their achievements and numbers grew and as attitudes both among and about female architects changed over a century.