The story of Henrietta Lacks has resonated with people around the world—through an award-winning book by author Rebecca Skloot and most recently, through a movie produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey that premieres this Sunday on HBO.

Now, that story will be immortalized further through a mural that Lacks’ granddaughter, Jeri Lacks Whye, and a Philadelphia-based art studio are working together to bring to life. They’ve also enlisted The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and see the process of creating the mural as a way to start conversations about the tensions between the storied medical institution and the surrounding community.   

“Jeri always says, ‘I just want people to know my grandma,’” says Lizzie Kripke, co-principal artist at Meg Saligman Studio. “Her grandmother is someone who’s a part of all of us now, in a literal way if we’ve had a polio vaccine.”

On January 29, 1951, Hopkins doctors took a biopsy from Henrietta Lacks—wife of a Bethlehem Steel worker—who had an aggressive form of cervical cancer. Though she passed away eight months later, the tissue, used by researchers without her consent, went on to establish the cell line HeLa—the first immortal human cells ever grown in a culture, which have been invaluable to medicine ever since. 

“There’s a lot of beauty in the science and in her life and family, along with the darker side,” Kripke says. “If we can cast things in a positive light, and acknowledge what’s gone wrong but also celebrate what’s gone right, I think that’s a different way to present this.”

She and the Lacks family are still deciding the site for the mural, and Kripke expects that the bulk of the work will take place next year.

“We’ll feature Henrietta Lacks, but it’s not going to be just a picture that memorializes her,” she says. “It’s going to pull lots of elements from the area as well as her life and story.”

The process of designing the mural will include getting Henrietta Lacks’ family, community members, and Hopkins doctors and officials in the same room for discussion.

“We can’t overstate what the art will do, as this story touches on so many interconnected issues,” Kripke says. “But I do think art is effective in getting the ball rolling and shifting culture in one way or another.”

It has been a 60-year battle. On January 29, 1951, doctors at The Johns Hopkins Hospital took a biopsy from Henrietta Lacks—wife of a Bethlehem Steel worker—who had an aggressive form of cervical cancer. 

Though she passed away eight months later, the tissue that was used without her consent went on to establish the cell line HeLa—the first immortal human cells ever grown in a culture, which have been invaluable to medical researchers ever since.

However, the Lacks family has never been consulted when researchers use this genomic data—something heavily profiled in Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks—until now. In August, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) made a privacy agreement with the Lacks family. “In 20 years at NIH, I can’t think of a specific experience more charged with scientific and ethical challenges than this one,” says NIH director Dr. Francis S. Collins. “It is truly fitting that her story is catalyzing changes in policy.”

Though the cells have been used in countless studies through the years, her family became concerned this past spring when German researchers completed the first whole genome sequence of her cell line and posted it to an open-access database.

“We were left in the dark,” says Owings Mills resident Jeri Lacks Whye, Lacks’s granddaughter, pictured, with her brother David. “For the past 60 years, we were pulled into science without consent and weren’t given a voice until now.”

The new agreement requires NIH-funded researchers to use a “controlled-access” database of the HeLa cell genome, governed by a panel that contains two of her grandchildren, both still living in Baltimore. “We are happy to be in the conversation now,” Lacks Whye says. “This is important in the legacy of Henrietta Lacks as a person.”