Students work on a mosaic tile project with professor Virginia Raguin.
One of the earliest public examples of Jesus Christ portrayed as a person of color was rediscovered recently in a renovated Rhode Island church, stirring up questions about race, the state’s role in the slave trade, and gender equality in 19th-century New England.
Virginia Raguin, an emerita professor of humanities in the visual arts department at Holy Cross, and an expert on the history of stained-glass art, told the Associated Press in a recent interview that she believes the skin tones in the nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window to be original and deliberate.
According to Raguin, the window, commissioned in 1877, could be the first of its kind. “It should stand as a landmark in American culture,” Raguin told The Boston Globe.
Relevant Coverage:
The Providence Journal, Apr. 1
Artnet, Apr. 10
The Boston Globe, May 6
Associated Press, May 14 (also ran in New York Post, Los Angeles Times and Fortune)
Fox News, May 15
BET, May 17