Washington Quarters: American Women (2022–2025)

Fraser's Washington Portrait Finally Reaches the Quarter, 90 Years After Mellon Rejected It

The obverse of every American Women Quarter carries a portrait of George Washington facing right, originally composed and sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser in 1931 as her submission for the 1932 quarter competition. The Commission of Fine Arts endorsed Fraser's design; Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon rejected it in favor of John Flanagan's submission and that design circulated for 90 years. When the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020 (Public Law 116-330) called for a Washington obverse distinguishable from the one on the previous quarters, the Commission of Fine Arts and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, meeting separately in April 2021, each recommended Fraser's portrait, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen approved it in June 2021. Fraser's initials LGF appear at the base of the bust truncation, visible on every coin in the series.¹

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee's April 2021 letter to Secretary Yellen recalled that Mellon had chosen Flanagan's design over Fraser's, the clear favorite of the Commission of Fine Arts at the time.² A portrait by a woman who was passed over in 1932 is now the obverse for a program honoring women who were themselves passed over, overlooked, or actively excluded from recognition in their own times.

20 Honorees, 4 Years: Program Structure and Selection

The program issued five new reverse designs per year from 2022 through 2025, for 20 total designs. Women were selected by the Treasury Secretary in consultation with the Smithsonian Institution's American Women's History Initiative, the National Women's History Museum, and the Bipartisan Women's Caucus. The legislation barred a portrait of any living person from the reverse, said the program should honor women from ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds, and allowed honorees from a wide range of fields including suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts. The 20 women honored across the four years were Maya Angelou, Dr. Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong (2022); Bessie Coleman, Edith Kanakaʻole, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jovita Idar, and Maria Tallchief (2023); Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Celia Cruz, and Zitkala-Ša (2024); and Ida B. Wells, Juliette Gordon Low, Dr. Vera Rubin, Stacey Park Milbern, and Althea Gibson (2025).³

Portrait Reverses Present a Different Design Problem Than Landscapes

Unlike the national parks reverses of the America the Beautiful program, which gave sculptors landscapes and architecture to work with, the American Women Quarter reverses are primarily portraits. Portraits on coins succeed or fail on likeness, expression, and the sculptor's ability to render individual character within a 24.26-millimeter circle. Emily Damstra's Maya Angelou reverse, the first coin in the program, handled the problem well: Angelou stands with arms uplifted before a bird in flight and a rising sun, images drawn from her poetry, and the design needs no caption to say what kind of person is being commemorated. Not every reverse in the series ties its portrait as closely to the honoree's own work.

Composition, Mint Marks, and the Collector Parallel

Clad business strikes were produced at Philadelphia and Denver throughout the program, with mintages in the hundreds of millions per year following the same pattern as the preceding circulating commemorative programs. San Francisco struck clad Proofs for the annual Proof sets, .999 fine silver Proofs for the silver Proof sets (continuing the composition adopted for all United States silver Proof coins in 2019), and uncirculated S-mint clad quarters sold to collectors in Mint roll sets. No W mint mark issues were produced for the American Women Quarters program; the West Point facility did not participate. With no business-strike issue struck in fewer than about 82 million pieces, Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) clad examples carry modest premiums set by grade rather than by mintage.⁴

Building the Set

A complete P and D business strike set runs to 40 date-and-mintmark combinations, all available at or near face value in circulated grades and at modest cost in lower Mint State grades. A full set adds San Francisco's twenty clad Proofs, twenty silver Proofs, and uncirculated S-mint roll quarters. The program concluded with Althea Gibson in 2025 and was succeeded by the Semiquincentennial quarter program for 2026, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Yeoman and Garrett's annual Guide Book of United States Coins provides current mintage and variety data for all American Women Quarter issues.