Visitors are invited to pay tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Friday on the front steps of the Skirball Cultural Center.
Visitors can come to the Skirball for curbside visits to bear witness and contribute to a one-day communal memorial display. They are welcome to add letters, photos, flowers, reflections and other personal tributes. In Washington, D.C., the justice will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, an honor never before granted to a woman.
In the hours and days following the news of Justice Ginsburg's death on Sept. 18, expressions of grief have grown online, including memories of visits to the Skirball's 2018-2019 exhibition Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Inspired by their members' own visit to the exhibition, the community arts organization Classroom of Compassion created and installed a physical floral and candle memorial on Sepulveda Boulevard on Monday. As the artists explained on Instagram, "We both remember (the exhibition) and leaving (that day) emboldened in our desire to continue moving the dial forward."
The display created by Classroom of Compassion will be included in the memorial on the Skirball's front steps. For the health and safety of all visitors, strict guidelines will be in place. The center asks that visitors wear a mask at all times. The Skirball campus, including restrooms, is otherwise closed to the public.
The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg's powerful dissenting opinions earned her late-life stardom. A pioneering advocate for women's rights, she became a cultural icon for a much younger generation. She served on the court for more than 27 years.
Ginsburg died Sept. 18 at age 87 from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer.
A private interment service will be held next week at Arlington National Cemetery, which Supreme Court justices can choose as their final resting place. Thirteen other Supreme Court justices are buried there, including former Chief Justices Earl Warren, William Rehnquist, William Howard Taft and Warren Burger.
Ginsburg is expected to be buried alongside her late husband, Martin Ginsburg, a tax lawyer and Army veteran who died of cancer in 2010.
