Social Justice Mural Captures Turbulent Times

The newest mural in the GDS High School, a multi-media installation created by Addie Lowenstein ’22 and Annabel Williams ’22, adds to the building’s rich collection of art made by students during their senior year.

For their Senior Quest, Addie and Annabel created a piece designed to capture some defining events of their high school days, including the polarizing 2020 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the January 6 insurrection, gun control debates, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, book bans, the effects of climate change, the fight for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, and the confirmation of four Supreme Court Justices.

Addie and Annabel watched these events unfold and explored the fallout through their AP art portfolios. For this project, they gathered their talents and ideas to create a mural that tells their story for future generations. The mural includes artifacts, newspaper clippings, and symbolism to capture the complexity of their experiences. They painted GDS students in the foreground.

The mural is displayed in the glass stairwell beside the High School field.

“One of the things that is most striking about the GDS High School building is the large array of student artwork on display, especially the murals painted on the building walls,” Addie and Annabel wrote in their project proposal, adding that the artwork allows for student self-expression and adds to the building’s charm. “We love that we could contribute to that.”

Student Art From Across The Years Decorates The High School
 

Mai-Hân Nguyen ’17 spent roughly a year creating Mangrove Mural, which spans 120 square feet of wall space along the High School’s science wing. Her portrait of mathematician Paul Erdos is displayed in the math hallway above the Forum alongside eight other alumni artworks of famous mathematicians, including Leonhard Euler by Pasha Feinberg ’07, Ramanujan by Ellie Lasater-Guttmann ’13, and Katherine Johnson by Jazzmin Cox-Cáceres ’19.
 

The walls of the building’s main staircase, the Fishbowl Stairwell, feature underwater scenes from the ground floor to the roof, painted by members of the Class of 1988, then restored in 2000 and again in 2008, after the construction of the new wing. One level below the new social justice mural (see left) is a massive map of Washington, DC painted by Joanna Millstein, Leni Hirsch, and Nomi Miller from the Class of 2013 during their Senior Quest. Graffiti art by students, including GRAMMY-nominated poet Sekou Andrews ’90, covers the walls of the back stairwell on the other side of the building.