In our August 2022 issue, we highlighted the identification by Virginia Raguin and Hadley Arnold of the first known depiction in American public art of Jesus as a black man. The glass, by the studio of Henry E. Sharp, was installed in 1878 in the church of St Mark, Warren, Rhode Island. The story has been given greater exposure in the news section of Art Net.
In the same issue of Art Net, Vidimus readers can catch up on the story of the 2016 vandalism of racist stained glass in a student dining room in Colhoun College, Yale University. The damaged glass depicted senator, Vice-President and slavery advocate John Colhoun (1782 – 1850), a Yale graduate, after whom the college residence had been named, accompanied by images of enslaved people. New medallions created by African American artists Barbara Earl Thomas and Faith Ringgold now adorn the windows of the renamed Grace Hopper College, commemorating another Yale graduate, the pioneering mathematician and computer scientist Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992): https://news.artnet.com/art-world/yale-replaces-racist-stained-glass-window-smashed-by-university-worker-in-2016-with-new-commissions-by-faith-ringgold-and-barbara-earl-thomas-2198244.
For an artists’ discussion of the project, go to: https://news.yale.edu/2022/08/25/new-hopper-college-windows-acknowledge-past-celebrate-present
