Famed for “Immortal” Cells, Henrietta Lacks is Immortalized in Portraiture at National Museum of African American History of Culture and the National Portrait Gallery
January 18, 2019
Kadir Nelson’s portrait captures the grace and kindness of Henrietta Lacks while nodding to her enduring biomedical legacy. (NPG and NMAAHC, Gift from Kadir Nelson and the JKBN Group LLC) In life, Virginia-born Henrietta Lacks did not aspire to international renown—she didn’t have the luxury. The great-great-granddaughter of a slave, Lacks was left motherless at a young age and deposited at her grandpa’s log cabin by a father who felt unfit to raise her. Never a woman of great means, Lacks wound up marrying a cousin she had grown up with and tending to their children—one of whom was developmentally
