In His Garage, an Untrained Artist Created a Work of Sublime Divinity

[Michie]

How deep faith created one of the loveliest—and most curious—sacred objects in the Smithsonian collections

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The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, James Hampton's strange and transporting magnum opus.

For some 14 years he labored in solitude. Lovingly. Obsessively. Every night after work, in a rented garage on 7th Street NW in Washington, D.C., James Hampton, a World War II veteran and janitor for the General Services Administration with no artistic training, methodically built what he came to call The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. Hampton prepared the throne to receive Jesus, flanked by a dozen angels, at the time of the Second Coming.

Hampton with his creation in the Washington, D.C. garage where he worked in the 1950s and early 1960s. Unknown photographer / Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Continued below.

In His Garage, an Untrained Artist Created a Work of Sublime Divinity

How deep faith created one of the loveliest—and most curious—sacred objects in the Smithsonian collections

www.smithsonianmag.com