Ida B. Wells Portrait to Go On Display August 24th in D.C.’s Union Station to Honor Suffragist Centennial

A 1000-square-foot art installation depicting civil rights, anti-lynching and women’s rights advocate Ida B. Wells will go on display in Washington D.C.’s Union Station on Aug. 24, According to wamu.org.

Artist Helen Marshall created the portrait of Wells out of almost 5,000 black-and-white photographs from the suffrage movement early in the 20th century.

“We need to see her portrait, and African American women need to be a lot more visible,” Marshall says. “She was fighting for the same causes that women are now.”

The project — which will be up through August 28 — was created by the British Marshall after she created a massive portrait of a British suffragist and installed it in a train station in Birmingham in the U.K.

Her American piece was commissioned by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, created by Congress to commemorate the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniversary.

To read more about Wells, click here.

To read more about the mosaic of her portrait: https://wamu.org/story/20/08/19/union-station-women-suffrage-centennial-ida-b-wells-mosaic/