A Yellow Rose Project: Five Years Later

A Yellow Rose Project: Five Years Later by Vicente CayuelaOctober 13, 2025

This week we celebrate the fifth anniversary of A Yellow Rose Project. This massive photographic collaboration compiles creative responses, reflections, and reactions to the 19th Amendment from over one hundred women across the United States. Originally a traveling exhibition founded and curated by artists Meg Griffths and Frances Jakubek, the project is now encased in a 216-page 9″ x 10″ hardcover cloth book illustrated with 107 color photographs (published by Texas A&M University Press).

A Yellow Rose Project is now on view at the main gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography through November 30. Read below for an exclusive excerpt of the curators’ conversation with Allison Huang about the project’s significance in this year’s tumultuous political landscape accompanied by a first look at the exhibition and book’s content.

Front cover. Courtesy the authors.

Installation shot of A Yellow Rose Project, on view at the Griffin Museum through November 30 | Photography by © Anna Sullivan, courtesy the Griffin Museum of Photography

Installation shot of A Yellow Rose Project, on view at the Griffin Museum through November 30 | Photography by © Anna Sullivan, courtesy the Griffin Museum of Photography

A Yellow Rose Project catalog, featuring images by Sheri Lynn Behr (left) & Tracy L Chandler

On the significance of the project today, curator Franced Jakubek shares: “Each time we speak about this project, we confront the reality that the very right we set out to celebrate is now under active threat. When the work first launched in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, only a few exhibitions were possible, and many people were unable to experience them in person. In some ways, the book’s arrival five years later feels like perfect timing. We’ve been able to gather essays that situate the project in a moment when rights once assumed to be secure are being eroded. Presenting it now, in 2025, allows the work to be seen not only as a commemoration of suffrage but also as part of an urgent historical continuum of women standing up for their voices and futures.” — Interview excerpt courtesy by Allison Huang, Griffin Museum of Photography

On the continued power of the Yellow Rose symbol today, curator Franced Jakubek shares: “The yellow rose remains a powerful symbol of justice and democracy. Yellow has long carried dual meanings like tenderness and femininity, as well as caution and hazard. In suffrage, it marked women who stood at the edge of safety to have their voices heard. Today, that history persists, reminding us that in a political climate not built in our best interests, we must continue to stand up for ourselves.” — Interview excerpt courtesy by Allison Huang, Griffin Museum of Photography

Installation shot of A Yellow Rose Project, on view at the Griffin Museum through November 30 | Photography by © Anna Sullivan, courtesy the Griffin Museum of Photography