The Women Before Me: My Journey Painting Honor Wall Portraits of Women Physicians.

Abstract

In this article, the authors briefly review the history and status of institutional honor wall portraits at medical schools, and they highlight the implications of a lack of diversity in these portraits for current medical students and the academic medicine pipeline. The authors then describe how contemporary portrait artists have used art as a tool for advocacy. They detail the first author's empowering and intimate journey as a medical student as she identified, connected with, and painted a portrait gallery of some of her medical school's prominent alumnae of color. This unique effort highlighted the unsung accomplishments of these women physicians and served to combat the visual disparity in honor wall portraits on campus. The authors also outline the common barriers faced by the portrait subjects and the key validation they offered the first author, a fellow woman of color. The authors describe the historical and psychological significance of several artistic decisions made for these portraits in weighing the intersections of race, gender, and profession. They then emphasize the reciprocal nature of oil portraiture and how, through painting these women, the first author was able to better envision her community of mentors, deepen her commitment to diversity and inclusion, and strengthen her own career aspirations. These portraits will hang in the student center of Harvard Medical School and will serve as a lasting reminder to future trainees, especially women and people of color, that they belong in the halls of medicine.