Twin Walls Mural Company<\/a> to create an artifact of sorts that commemorated the sweeping research project.\u00a0<\/p>\nMarina 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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 \u2014\u00a0all with a nod to the way they\u2019re influencing the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel like all of those women are connected,\u201d Perez-Wong said. \u201cSomeone from the \u201950s might influence me now. That\u2019s my present. It\u2019s not really the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hope is that when people see the mural, they will see someone who inspires them.<\/p>\n
Oliver O\u2019Reilly<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Helen Wills Roark is mid-stride with a tennis racket. Chien-Shiung Wu, the \u201cFirst Lady of Physics,\u201d 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 Yn\u00e9s Mex\u00eda and Carol Christ, Berkeley\u2019s first female chancellor, who helped initiate the research project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The painting also pays tribute to Berkeley\u2019s LGBTQ+ scholars, with portraits of Judith Butler, the nonbinary philosopher and gender theorist, and Susan Stryker, who helped create the field of transgender studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some back-and-forth,\u201d Chu said of deciding how to depict each person, adding that the research into each story was part of the process. \u201cEach project, we learn something new. And so this one exposed us to all the amazing women at Cal.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0The building will open for classes in the fall.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Group_1_1_BDG2540.png\")
In the center of the mural is a composite of five graduates, a stand-in for women in the past, present and future. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to have thousands of students seeing that mural every day,\u201d O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cHopefully, some of them will look on that website and be inspired by the people in the mural. And some will see paths for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis mural celebrates the remarkable women of Berkeley whose contributions have shaped our university and the world beyond,\u201d Chancellor Rich Lyons said. \u201cThese women have advanced fields, opened doors and built lasting legacies. I\u2019m 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
One artistic detail is especially notable. In the center of the mural stands a group of five women. They\u2019re not meant to be historical figures, Perez-Wong said, but composite characters representing current students surrounded by a history of influential women.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted it to be people who are connected to those other women,\u201d she said, \u201cbut who are inspired and looking outward because they\u2019re pushing that envelope even more so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From university founders and a renowned football coach to its 23 bear statues, UC Berkeley\u2019s history has long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[95890,2791,95891,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-207964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-150w","tag-campus","tag-campus-buildings-and-places","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Mural_Segment1_WebSize-920x1024.jpeg\")
A section of the mural. From left to right, top to bottom: June Jordan, Helen Wills, Susan Stryker, Carol Christ, Elaine Kim, Charmin Smith, Ida Louise Jackson with her students, Yn\u00e9s Mex\u00eda, Jennifer Doudna.<\/p>\n