And a portrait of Mrs. Samuel Ripley, who tutored Harvard preparatory students to supplement her husband’s income, hangs in poor condition on the wall of the office of Jane Knowles, interim director of Radcliffe’s Schlessinger Library.

“She was the mother of eight, taught boys and rusticated Harvard students in her home [and] would read Homer or Virgil as she shelled peas and rocked a cradle,” Knowles said of Ripley in a memo she sent to Emilie Norris, who is the project manager for the University cultural property survey.

Such women, many argue, deserve more recognition.

But because the University’s portrait collection is composed solely of gifts, the only way to increase the number of monuments to women on Harvard’s campus is for people to commission such works, according to Grindlay.

“The process of commissioning new portraits doesn’t happen overnight,” Grindlay says.

But increasing the visibility of monuments to women is important nonetheless, says Georgene Herschbach. The presence of portraits and other monuments to women helps to set a tone of respect for the contributions of women at Harvard, she says.

“It gives the message that this place is by and for women as well as men,” she says. “Women are a part of this community at every level.”

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.