Sprawling new painting commemorates 150 years of women at UC Berkeley

From university founders and a renowned football coach to its 23 bear statues, UC Berkeley’s history has long been displayed through campus art. But one key demographic has been woefully underrepresented in the collection: women. 

Until now.  

A vibrant new painting visible in the soon-to-open Undergraduate Academic Building next to Dwinelle Hall features 41 prominent women spanning 150 years of Berkeley ties. They run the gamut from 19th-century icons like famed architect Julia Morgan to contemporary biochemist and Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna. Their individual portraits punctuate a wall of yellow and purple-blue hues, meant to symbolize the ripple of water and how their contributions from sport to science also transcend time. 

“It was important to have representation from different eras and different groups,” said Oliver O’Reilly, Berkeley’s vice provost for undergraduate education and a co-leader, with Sharon Inkelas, on the latest art installation. Passersby will be able to scan a QR code on an adjacent plaque, which will send them to a new website with annotations and biographies for each woman. 

“My hope is that when people see the mural, they will see someone who inspires them,” O’Reilly said. “They’ll be curious about who these people are. And they’ll go and explore. I really hope it’s a source of inspiration, more than anything else.” 

The year 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of UC regents approving a resolution “that young ladies be admitted into the University on equal terms in all respects with young men.” The campus commemorated the anniversary with an extensive campus-wide history project that documented the legacy of women at Berkeley. The effort was led by Cathy Gallagher, an emerita professor of English, and Sheila Humphreys, emerita director for equity and inclusion in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

A team raised money for a potential art project that paid homage to remarkable Berkeley women, but deciding where it could live remained a puzzle. Around that time, plans were also taking shape for a new building replacing a parking lot west of Dwinelle Hall. 

Inkelas, a campus leader and distinguished professor of linguistics, along with O’Reilly and a team that included campus architect Wendy Hillis and Valerie Zylla, a project manager, decided the new space presented a perfect blank canvas. With a growing list of names, the team hired the Twin Walls Mural Company to create an artifact of sorts that commemorated the sweeping research project. 

Marina Perez-Wong and Elaine Chu, co-founders of Twin Walls, faced their biggest challenge at the beginning: deciding how one painting could convey a century and a half of world-changing women. They joined workshops with faculty and campus leaders spearheading the anniversary campaign and gradually got a sense of their vision. 

What made the contributions of each of these people so profound, the artists said, was the way their contributions rippled through time. Rather than simply showing people from the past to present in a left-to-right fashion, they wanted the constellation of iconic leaders to be linked across time — all with a nod to the way they’re influencing the future. 

“We feel like all of those women are connected,” Perez-Wong said. “Someone from the ’50s might influence me now. That’s my present. It’s not really the past.”

They sourced images from the 150 Years of Women at Berkeley campaign as well as their own research, seeking out images that were clear enough so they could accurately paint the details. They also needed to decide in what stage of their careers the women should be depicted and what type of photos to model the portraits after. 

Helen Wills Roark is mid-stride with a tennis racket. Chien-Shiung Wu, the “First Lady of Physics,” wears a lab coat and works with equipment. Chez Panisse founder and food activist Alice Waters cultivates plants. Then there are the front-facing portraits of the poet June Jordan, the botanist Ynés Mexía and Carol Christ, Berkeley’s first female chancellor, who launched the research project. 

The painting also pays tribute to Berkeley’s LGBTQ+ scholars, with portraits of Judith Butler, the nonbinary philosopher and gender theorist, and Susan Stryker, who helped create the field of transgender studies.

“There was some back-and-forth,” Chu said of deciding how to depict each person, adding that the research into each story was part of the process. “Each project, we learn something new. And so this one exposed us to all the amazing women at Cal.”

Once their research was completed, it took about a month to paint it across a 5.5-by-21-foot stretch of parachute cloth in their studio. A photographer then captured high-resolution images of the painting, which was then expanded and printed on the acoustic walls in the entryway of the new 400-person auditorium. The building will open for classes in the fall.

“You’re going to have thousands of students seeing that mural every day,” O’Reilly said. “Hopefully, some of them will look on that website and be inspired by the people in the mural. And some will see paths for themselves.”

“This mural celebrates the remarkable women of Berkeley whose contributions have shaped our university and the world beyond,” Chancellor Rich Lyons said. “These women have advanced fields, opened doors and built lasting legacies. I’m proud that this tribute will live in our new, state-of-the-art Undergraduate Academic building, where thousands of students will see it every day.” 

One artistic detail is especially notable. In the center of the mural stands a group of five women. They’re not meant to be historical figures, Perez-Wong said, but composite characters representing current students surrounded by a history of influential women. 

“We wanted it to be people who are connected to those other women,” she said, “but who are inspired and looking outward because they’re pushing that envelope even more so.”