A Women's
Window

In June 2022 we removed an 1877 Henry Sharp Studio stained glass window from an 1830 church in Warren, RI. The window depicts Christ with Mary and Martha (top panel), and Christ with the Samaritan Woman (lower panel), all rendered as people of color. Mounted as Reconstruction was coming to an end, the window was given in memory of two sisters, white women married into a slave-trading fortune, and abolitionists.
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The window is unusual--possibly the first representation of a Black Christ and Black Gospel Women in public space. And it is enigmatic. In mounting this window, what was the parish saying, to itself, to others, and to us? About women? service? race? reparation? reconciliation? allyship?

• (1) Find a museum home for the window. What institution(s) have the resources, the reach, the chops—and also the public’s trust?—to preserve and display this massive, fragile, complicated piece of public art and share it with national audiences?
• (2) And just as importantly: wherever the new home may be, how do Rhode Islanders keep having conversations about the window and with each other, responding to each of the provocative questions the window poses?

• Window Update: February 2024.
• "Warren's nationally famous window headed to Memphis museum",  by Ethan Hartley, EastBayRI, December 12, 2023.

• Imperfect Allies: 1877 Window Showing Black Christ and Women, Summer 2022.
• Raguin, V., and Arnold, H., The First Black Jesus and Black New Testament Women Displayed in a Public Setting?, Vidimus, 140, August 2022.
• Window Advisors Gathering #1, Update, Fall 2022.
• Window Advisors Gathering #2, Update, October 2022.
• Mues, P., Research: Bourne, deWolf, Carr Women, Middle Passage Project, Warren, RI, November 2022.
• Will of Ruth Bourne deWolf, Courtesy of Catherine Zipf, Ph.D., Executive Director, Bristol Historical and Preservation Society, Bristol, RI, 2022.
• Excerpt:
  ‍Monthly Chronicle, Baltimore of November 1876, Editorial Correspondence. Letter from an old House of an old Town, Number Three, February 10, 1877, reprinted in the Bristol Phoenix, February 10, 1877.,  Courtesy Catherine Zipf, Ph.D., Executive Director, Bristol Historical and Preservation Society, Bristol, RI, 2022.
• Conservator's Report available upon request.
• Public Panel Discussion:
  Imperfect Allies. Gender, Race, and Allyship in the 1877 Gibbs-DeWolf Window, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, Providence, RI, March 16, 2023.
• Landeck, K., A 'radical' 1877 window found in a RI church depicts Jesus as a person of color. What now?, The Providence Journal, April 06, 2023.
• "In Warren, a revelatory discovery has hidden in plain sight since 1877," by Ethan Hartley, EastBayRI, April 19, 2023.
• "In Rhode Island, a stained-glass window shows Christ as a man of color," by Malcom Gay, Boston Globe, May 6, 2023.
• "A Rare Stained Glass in Rhode Island Depicts a Black Jesus ," by Vickie Newton, TheVillageCelebration, May 8, 2023.
• "Stained Glass Window Shows Jesus Christ with dark skin, stirring questions about race in New England," by Mark Pratt, The Associated Press, May 14, 2023.
• "The Story Behind the Stained Glass at the Former Saint Mark's Church, Warren," by Lauren Clem, Rhode Island Monthly, June 28, 2023.