ARCHITECT's Katharine Keane reports that drug overdoses killed more than 63,000 Americans in 2016, and those numbers are only rising—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an effort to raise awareness of this epidemic, the National Safety Council (NSC) has partnered with the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and the Executive Office of the President to bring the traveling exhibit wall Prescribed to Death: A Memorial to the Victims of the Opioid Crisis to Washington, D.C., on April 12–18.
Located in the Ellipse of President's Park across Constitution Avenue NW from the Washington Monument, the U-shaped exhibit wall is 8 feet tall with 20.5-foot-long wings and a 23.5-foot-long feature wall. The memorial is decorated with 22,000 white "pills," each of which is engraved with a face meant to represent "someone lost to a prescription opioid overdose in 2015," according to a NSC press release. President Donald Trump made the initial announcement of the memorial's latest location via a Tweet last month.
