Barbara Earl Thomas of Seattle has been commissioned to design five stained-glass window panes in the Grace Hopper College dining hall.
Barbara Earl Thomas of Seattle has been commissioned to design five stained-glass window panes in the Grace Hopper College dining hall.
Barbara Earl Thomas of Seattle has been commissioned to design five stained-glass window panes in the Grace Hopper College dining hall.
Barbara Earl Thomas of Seattle has been commissioned to design five stained-glass window panes in the Grace Hopper College dining hall.
NEW HAVEN — Artist Barbara Earl Thomas of Seattle has been chosen to design new stained-glass windows for the dining hall of Yale University’s Grace Hopper College that will both confront the racist legacy of John C. Calhoun, for whom the college originally was named, and honor Hopper, the university said.
“My goal with this project is to depict the history of the college’s name in a way that is real, honorable, and in the spirit of our time,” Thomas said in a release. “I want the images to tell the story of the renaming, addressing John C. Calhoun’s disturbing legacy while honoring the life of Grace Murray Hopper.”
In February 2017, the residential college was renamed for Hopper, a Yale-educated mathematician and computer scientist and a rear admiral in the Navy. The renaming followed a year of protests that included community activists. After first deciding not to rename the college, Yale President Peter Salovey appointed a committee to establish renaming guidelines and a committee recommended the change.
One of the original residential colleges established in 1933, Calhoun College was named for the U.S. vice president and senator from South Carolina, who was an avowed advocate for slavery. The windows in the dining hall and common room depicted Calhoun’s life and symbols of the antebellum South.
In June 2016, Corey Menafee, a dining hall worker, smashed one of the small panes in the dining hall that showed enslaved workers in a cotton field. All of the windows were replaced with tinted glass. Two of the new dining hall windows will directly address the controversy over Calhoun and the renaming, the release stated.
Thomas also will create a pair of portraits in laser-cut steel, one of Hopper and the other of Roosevelt Thompson, a Black resident of the college and Rhodes scholar who died in a car crash. The dining hall was named for Thompson in 2016. The portraits will be backlit and appear to be engaged in conversation, the release stated.
Anoka Faruqee, a professor in the Yale School of Art who was chairwoman of the window committee, said Thomas’ skill as a storyteller and willingness to tackle social issues were among the reasons she was chosen.
“Barbara confronts topics that people are often in denial about, such as systemic racism,” Faruqee said in the release. “We didn’t want this project to deny the site’s history. The committee was impressed with the way her preliminary design interweaves the contrasting legacies of Calhoun, Hopper, and Thompson. One of her strengths as an artist is her ability to examine disparate histories and show how they intersect and relate to one another.”
Faith Ringgold was selected last year to design the six new windows in the Hopper College common room.
In addition to glass, Thomas works in egg tempera painting, glass, cut paper, sculpture and linocut and woodblock prints. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibits in Tacoma, Wash., Savannah, Ga., Shreveport, La., and Evansville, Ind. A solo exhibit of Thomas’ work, addressing “plagues of our day,” including violence against Black men and youth, gun violence and climate change, will open in November at the Seattle Art Museum.
“I’m honored to be a part of this project, and I’m excited to pursue it with my hands, my voice, and my heart,” Thomas said in the release. “I believe in our ability as a nation to evolve and change; to forgive and embrace the change wrought from contentious debates. With input from the Yale community, I hope to produce work that celebrates change as we unflinchingly face our past.”
“Barbara is an incredibly gifted artist,” said Julia Adams, head of Hopper College and a member of the windows committee. “Her proposal stood out not just for its wonderful aesthetic qualities, but because it expresses a deep sense of history through graphic representation. Her work will be a vibrant and thought-provoking addition to the college’s community.”
One of the new windows will feature Calhoun being confronted by a formerly enslaved man, whose chains are broken. Another symbolizes the college’s name change by depicting birds carrying banners to or from the foreground. A third will commemorate Yale’s becoming coed in 1969. The final two will be decided with input from students and committee members.