The U.S. Mint has revealed the designs for five new American Women Quarters featuring Althea Gibson, Juliette Gordon Low, Stacey Park Milbern, Vera Rubin, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Each design pays tribute to one of the women and their contributions to U.S. history.

“They each have so much character in them. These women’s stories are now literally actually embodied in a physical object, in one quarter.
That is something that everyone across the country can literally hold in their hand,”
Elizabeth C. Babcock, the director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, which collaborated with the U.S. Mint on the series, told me. “There is a physicality, a tangible nature to this celebration that I think is really special.”

Each coin’s reverse has been designed by an artist from the mint’s Artistic Infusion Program, which is responsible for the nation’s coins and medals. (In March, the mint added 25 new AIP artists to its existing staff of 13.) The mint’s six medallic artists are responsible for translating the portraits into tiny relief sculptures.

The coin for Gibson is designed by Don Everhart and sculpted by Renata Gordon. Elana Hagler designed the Wells and Milbern quarters, sculpted by Phebe Hemphill and Craig A. Campbell, respectively. Designer Tom Hipschen and medallic artist Eric David Custer teamed up on Low’s coin. Finally, Rubin’s coin is designed by Christina Hess and sculpted by John P. McGraw.

American Women Quarters, Ida B. Wells-Barnett designed by Elana Hagler, to be sculpted by Phebe Hemphill.

All the coins in the series also feature a George Washington portrait on the obverse—but not the one you’re typically used to seeing on quarters, which is by John Flanagan. Instead, it is a similar version of Washington’s visage (facing to the right, not the left) designed by Laura Gardin Fraser, a prominent early 20th-century sculptor who was the first woman to design a U.S. coin.

Flanagan’s design has been in circulation since 1932, the 200th anniversary of the first president’s birth. A bicentennial committee held a competition for the half dollar, asking for artists to base their design on the bust Jean-Antoine Houdon made after a 1785 visit with Washington.

Laura Gardin Fraser’s award-winning 1932 portrait of George Washington is finally in use on the American Womens Quarters. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Mint.

(The plaster sculpture is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and is the basis for a marble monument at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond.)

Though Fraser won the competition, Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury, ultimately picked Flanagan’s portrait for the new quarter. Fraser’s overlooked Washington—which was also used for a 1999 commemorative $5 gold coin—is the perfect choice for a coin series recognizing women’s achievements, which all too often go unsung.

American Women Quarters, Althea Gibson designed by Don Everhart, to be sculpted by Renata Gordon.

The new American Women Quarters are set to be released in 2025, as the final year for the program, which was announced in 2020, as part of the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act. That same year, Congress also passed a bill approving the creation of a new Smithsonian museum dedicated to women’s history.

The museum’s opening is still many years off. Congress needs to pass legislation approving a proposed site, after which the process of choosing an architect and designing the building can begin. But in the meantime, the museum has already begun staging online exhibitions and holding programming celebrating the subjects of the American Women Quarters.

Partnering with the U.S. Mint on the coin series was a natural fit for the fledgling institution, which has the mission of telling the stories of women in U.S. history, both collectively and individually.

American Women Quarters, Stacey Park Milbern designed by Craig A. Campbell, to be sculpted by Elana Hagler.

“When you look at how we tell American history now, what kids grow up learning in school and in their textbooks, there are these gaps there. Women are just not represented,” Babcock said. “But we’re 51 percent of the population, and we were there during all those historic moments that shaped American history.”

The U.S. Mint began issuing special new quarter designs with the United States Commemorative Coins Act of 1996. The first were the popular 50 States Quarters, issued from 1999 through 2008, followed by coins for the District of Columbia and the territories in 2009.

The American Women Quarters follow the America the Beautiful Quarters, which from 2010 to 2021 featured national parks and national forests. The 2020 coin redesign act calls for five quarters celebrating the nation’s semiquincentennial in 2026, and then up to five new coins each year from 2027 to 2030 for youth sports.

To choose the 20 honorees for the women’s quarters, the mint invited the public to make recommendations. The goal was to highlight an ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse group of women with a wide range of accomplishments.  Curators from the women’s museum then consulted with the mint to make the final selection.

The 2023 American Women Quarters. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Mint.

“We’ve had artists, we’ve had scientists, we’ve had astronauts, we’ve had leaders of native Indigenous peoples, we’ve had composers, we’ve had activists, we’ve had dancers—the whole range,” Babcock said.

The last round of honorees is, as always a colorful group.

Gibson was a famed athlete who competed at elite levels in both golf and tennis. She was the first Black athlete to play international tennis, and the first to win a Grand Slam, picking up 11 titles across singles and doubles in her illustrious career.

Then there is Rubin, an astronomer who made the first observations indicating the existence of dark matter, and also fought against the discrimination of women in the sciences.

American Women Quarters, Juliette Gordon Low designed by Tom Hipschen, to be sculpted by Eric David Custer.

And while you might not know Low’s name, you certainly know the Girl Scouts, which she founded in America. She also designed and patented the organization’s signature trefoil badge (which also became a classic Girl Scout Cookie variety).

Perhaps the best known of the quintet is Wells, an influential muckraker and investigative journalist. She was also a suffragist and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The most contemporary of the honorees is Milbern, a disabilities activist born with congenital muscular dystrophy, who died in 2020 at the age of just 33.

The American Women Quarter for Native American activist Zitkala-Ša, designed by Don Everhart and sculpted by Renata Gordon. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Mint.

This fall marked the release of the last of the 2024 quarters, featuring Native American composer, writer, and activist Zitkala-Ša. This year also honored Civil War surgeon and women’s rights advocate Mary Edwards Walker; Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to serve in Congress; writer, activist, lawyer, and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray; and Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz.

The 2023 honorees were Bessie Coleman, the first African American and first Native American woman licensed pilot; Indigenous Hawaiian composer Edith Kanakaʻolei; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; Mexican-American journalist and suffragist Jovita Idar; and Maria Tallchief, the first prima ballerina in the U.S.

The Maya Angelou American Woman Quarter, designed by Emily Damstra and sculpted by Craig Campbell. Courtesy of the U.S. Mint.

The program kicked off in 2022 with pioneering Chinese American film star Anna May Wong; Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; African American writer and activist Maya Angelou; suffragist Nina Otero-Warren; and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman chief of Cherokee Nation.

“We’re getting to celebrate the many diverse ways that women have helped shape American history and the American experience,” Babcock added. “The fact that there’s going to be a few 100 million quarters of each of these fantastic women, that’s special.
It’s a concentrated and very public facing way to say, ‘hey, you know what? To understand the United States and to understand our history, we need to know about these women.'”