PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The portrait of former Philadelphia school board president Joyce Wilkerson is decidedly different from the other likenesses on the wall at School District of Philadelphia headquarters.
Wilkerson served as chair of the state-run School Reform Commission and also chaired the Philadelphia Board of Education during the transition to local control in 2018.
Wilkerson’s portrait is a striking departure from the traditional posed portraits of board presidents lining the second-floor hallway leading to the auditorium.
“I love it. I actually use it as my — you know, you have pictures on your phone — and so when I answer my phone, this is what comes up,” Wilkerson said Wednesday.
The portrait is a colorful mixed-media depiction of a contemplative Wilkerson, with the President’s House at Sixth and Market streets superimposed over her gaze. Wilkerson, as former Mayor John Street’s chief of staff, pushed for funding for the President’s House, where presidents George Washington and John Adams lived — and where enslaved people worked.
Philadelphia artist Sydney Carter says she included an overlay of the President’s House in Wilkerson’s portrait “because, as much as she cares about education and the children, that was also a big part of her that I wanted people to know.”
While Wilkerson is pleased with the portrait, which she says evokes a feeling of “joyful determination,” she believes it undervalues the contributions of her fellow board members. “I don’t sit up there by myself, and that none of this happens with just the board president,” she said.
A quotation from Wilkerson runs vertically alongside her image: “Not as long as I have anything to do with it.”
“I felt that that is a quote that’s just — yes! Like, that perfectly captured her. And so I have that and it’s embossed in the painting,” Carter explained.
Mayor Cherelle Parker has the authority to appoint her own school board members. Wilkerson, however, believes it’s better if there’s not an entirely new board. “I think there’s a lot to be said to have some kind of continuity, even if it’s not all nine of us,” she said.
Wilkerson, 73, says she’d be willing to continue serving, but maybe not a full term. “I don’t know that I have another four years in me!” she joked.
“I look to stay engaged,” she said. “I don’t feel that I necessarily need to be a part of the board, but I’d be willing to serve.”
The $2,200 portrait was commissioned by the nonprofit Fund for the School District of Philadelphia.