Breonna Taylor portrait sale funds new Louisville law scholarship - Reuters

File photo: A memorial for Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston

• Artist Amy Sherald, whose paintings of Taylor and Michelle Obama won wide acclaim, donated $1 million to the University of Louisville from portrait's sale
• Social justice-minded law students will receive summer stipends

(Reuters) - The sale of a portrait of Breonna Taylor that appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine in 2020 will help support a new cohort of lawyers focused on social justice issues.

Artist Amy Sherald, who also painted the portrait of former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, donated $1 million from the sale of her Taylor portrait to fund scholarships for law students and undergraduates at the University of Louisville, the Kentucky school said this week.

Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was fatally shot in March 2020 by Louisville police executing a “no knock” warrant on her apartment. Her death, followed by the police killing of George Floyd two months later, spurred national protests over racial inequality.

Sherald sold the Taylor portrait to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and Louisville’s Speed Art Museum. The museums purchased the painting in March with $1 million donated by the Ford Foundation and the Hearthland Foundation, which is run by the actress Kate Capshaw and film director Steven Spielberg.

The University of Louisville's Brandeis School of Law announced Sherald's gift at its first Breonna Taylor Lecture on Structural Inequality on Sunday.

“I have long held the belief of the transformative power of education and its ability to foster new conversations and accelerate societal growth,” Sherald said in a statement announcing the donation.

The Breonna Taylor Legacy Fellowship will fund $9,000 stipends for law students to volunteer over the summer with a social justice nonprofit organization or agency.

The law school in 2020 offered a course called Breonna Taylor's Louisville: Race, Equity and Law that explores race and inequality in everything from policing and housing to healthcare and employment.

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source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/breonna-taylor-portrait-sale-funds-new-louisville-law-scholarship-2022-04-12/

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