Shattered glass portrait of Kamala Harris unveiled on National Mall

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As the first female, Black, and Asian American elected to the nation’s second-highest office, it is fitting for Vice President Kamala Harris‘ place in history to be marked by a cracked glass portrait that symbolizes her glass-shattering career.

The extraordinary new artwork, standing 6 feet tall and stretching 6 feet wide, was unveiled by the National Women’s History Museum and placed in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Thursday.

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“This will just be a wonderful visual emblem of this moment in time and hopefully people will reflect a little bit on all the barriers that have been broken by her election,” Holly Hotchner, president and CEO of the National Women’s History Museum, told The Associated Press.

No stranger to breaking the barriers that prevent women from advancing to leadership positions, Harris was the first woman and person of color to serve as district attorney of San Francisco and the first Black person to serve as California’s attorney general and to represent the state in the United States Senate.

The extraordinary piece titled “Glass Ceiling Breaker” was created by Swedish artist Simon Berger, who is renowned for his glasswork. Inspired by a photo of Harris that was taken by New York photographer Celeste Sloman, Berger hammered into laminated glass in order to create the shattered effect that forms the portrait, AP reported.

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“I hit the glass directly with the hammer, so that cracks and impacts occur,” Berger said in an email to the news outlet. “Hard hits create abstraction and I paint with targeted fine hits.”

The portrait will remain at the Lincoln Memorial until Saturday evening when it returns to New York.

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