A portrait of metalsmithing and jewelry design pioneer Alma Eikerman will be dedicated to the Women of Indiana University Portrait Collection during an unveiling ceremony Friday, April 22. Eikerman (1908-95) built IU’s Metalsmithing and Jewelry Design area into one of the nation’s premier programs over her three decades at the university, while her own work was featured in over 200 exhibitions around the world during her lifetime.

The oil painting of Eikerman by Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design Professor Emerita Bonnie Sklarski joins a collection of portraits of prominent women at IU, including the first female trustee, first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, and the first Black woman to graduate from IU. The painting was commissioned in 2021. Although the portrait is posthumous, as a new faculty member Sklarski worked alongside Eikerman, and the artists became friends.

The event, which is open to the public, begins at 1 p.m. in the East Lounge in the Indiana Memorial Union (in the mezzanine above the Biddle Hotel lobby) where the collection enjoys a rotating exhibition. Sklarski will be one of several speakers at Friday’s event, which will also feature remarks by Eskenazi School Founding Dean and Professor Peg Faimon, Metalsmithing and Jewelry Design Professor and Area Coordinator Nicole Jacquard, Associate Director of Campus Art Katie Chattin, and Eskenazi alum Susan Ewing, Distinguished Professor of Art Emerita at the College of Creative Arts, Miami University.