Last Supper Sculpture

Monumental Masterpiece

During the demolition of our building — a repurposed neighborhood church — we found a masterpiece: The Last Supper by Akili Ron Anderson This enormous frieze of the Last Supper had been hidden behind drywall for more than a decade. Created by artist Akili Ron Anderson in the early 1980s, Jesus and his disciples are depicted as African American men, an example of the artist’s mission of placing Black people in the center of an ongoing cultural conversation.

Akili Ron Anderson, member of the Black Arts Movement and the Chicago based AfriCOBRA collective, was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the New Home Baptist Church in 1981. Anderson envisioned his artwork forming a picture that would be completed by the presence of a preacher and a choir. When New Home left the building in 1997, they were not able to move the sculpture to their new location.

The Conservatory made efforts to relocate the Last Supper to the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Although multiple constraints prevented the move, NMAAHC repaired and restored the sculpture, created a 3-D rendering and accessioned it into their collection.

Anderson’s body of work includes public and private artworks in stained glass, fine arts, sculpture and other mediums. He is a tenured art professor at Howard University.

Find more about the sculpture and how to visit at lastsuppersculpture.org.