Kerry James Marshall, Now And Forever; Elizabeth Alexander, “American Song,” Washington National Cathedral

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0:00:06.6 Beth Harris: We’re standing in the aisle at Washington National Cathedral, and we’re looking at a set of brand new stained glass windows by the contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall.

0:00:18.3 Kevin Eckstrom: These windows replace twin windows that were here for 70 years that honored Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The they were donated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy back in 1953 as part of a nationwide campaign to resurrect the image and the myth-telling of the Confederacy. One, they contained two images of the Confederate battle flag. That symbol is a symbol of white supremacy and racial oppression. The other thing was these stone tablets that were underneath the windows lifted both men to almost sainthood. Well, we have a different understanding now.

0:00:54.7 Beth Harris: And it wasn’t only here that those two figures, Lee and Jackson, were honored in that way, as Christian saints. This was really common iconography. And the U.D.C. funded so many of these across the country, and that’s what happened here.

0:01:08.3 Kevin Eckstrom: This is not just a courthouse square, and this is not just your average everyday church. This is the National Cathedral in the capital of the North, which was important to the U.D.C., that they got that visibility. And so these windows were not just benign historical objects. They were very much intended as part of a movement to suppress Black America and to elevate a false narrative about our shared history. This was an effort to almost give a sacramental blessing to the Lost Cause in a sacred space in the nation’s church. And by the time we got to 2015, that was no longer tenable.

0:01:49.8 Beth Harris: You’re referring to the murder of people who were worshiping in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

0:01:55.5 Kevin Eckstrom: This was a gunman who wanted to launch a race war and was using this particular symbol to rally people to his cause, and we saw the toll that it took. And cathedrals speak, not only through the word on Sunday mornings, but they speak through their architecture, and they speak through their art, their windows, their carvings. And the story that this cathedral was telling through those windows was not one that we were particularly proud of, and it was not one that squared with our understanding of either God, or our brothers or sisters, or American history. So it became increasingly clear that for whatever their historical value, the windows did not belong in the sacred space of a cathedral.

0:02:35.0 Beth Harris: But these windows do.

0:02:37.0 Kevin Eckstrom: Yes. What these windows convey is that the struggle for fairness, the struggle for justice, is a religious struggle, and that God is in the midst of these people who are marching for fairness. So we’ve had a really interesting discussion here at the cathedral about what exactly is sacred art? And do you have to have a cross or a sacred symbol? What these windows show us is that God is in the everyday, and that God is in the midst of this struggle. And this is a part of our history that this cathedral has never really told before. So this is a way of expanding the narrative of the stories we tell and the people that we include.

0:03:15.9 Beth Harris: Kerry James Marshall doesn’t show us much of the faces of these figures.

0:03:21.1 Kevin Eckstrom: One of the things that he said he was trying to do was to show that the struggle is more important than the people who are involved in it. You notice that the figures are turning around and going the other way, which implies that this is a circular movement. They are continuing to fight, they’re continuing to march. So it’s an ongoing struggle.

0:03:39.0 Beth Harris: I also see that in the colors.

0:03:40.8 Kevin Eckstrom: On the ground, it’s bright, fiery oranges and reds, really hot colors. And then as you move up about the same elevation where the messaging is of fairness and no foul play, those are cooler colors. And as he describes it, it’s the equivalent of the elevation of an idea.

0:03:56.3 Beth Harris: This is not a medium that Kerry James Marshall had worked in. So I imagine this was very exciting to create a work in a medium that light passes through, and there’s something magical about that.

0:04:08.8 Kevin Eckstrom: But what’s interesting about these windows and what’s different about them is the amount of white glass. And it’s unlike any other window in the cathedral. It lets the outside world in, and it illuminates the entire space, and it beckons you.

0:04:22.5 Beth Harris: One of the other things that I noticed that’s different is how much larger these pieces of glass are than so many of the other windows in the cathedral.

0:04:30.3 Kevin Eckstrom: What that means is that it’s actually one of the most readable windows.

0:04:33.9 Beth Harris: We have fairness and this repetition of a negative, of no, of not. And what that reminds me of is a very primal feeling of what’s right and wrong that we have from a very young age.

0:04:48.7 Kevin Eckstrom: What’s interesting is the one word that’s actually not in these windows, and that’s justice. And that was partly because what justice means to you may not be what justice means to me. We may not be able to agree on what justice is or what justice looks like. Generally, people know what’s fair. As he explained it, even kids know what fairness feels like or what foul play feels like. He said that at this point in his career, he’s more interested in precision and clarity than anything else. And so he said, you don’t get much more clear than fairness and foul play.

0:05:22.2 Beth Harris: So, like all stained glass windows, these began with a cartoon, a drawing that the artist made in order to work with someone who specialized in creating stained glass windows.

0:05:35.0 Kevin Eckstrom: Transferring a hand-drawn sketch onto a new medium of stained glass, and then each piece of glass is held together by lead caming, and then there’s all sorts of other techniques that hold it all together. But the most interesting thing that I think of these windows are the textures. And if you look at the figures, particularly their clothing, you see the textures of the fabric. And that was all done with hand stamps that Kerry James Marshall made. He made more than 80 different stamps for this window. And what he had to do was imagine what that line was gonna look like, and then he would cut it out of craft foam, and then he would paint it black and stamp it onto the windows.

0:06:14.1 Beth Harris: And it’s really those details that he added that make the image come alive, that give it a sense of movement, of texture, of three dimensionality. And I’m thinking of the emphasis on the shoes, and this idea of marching, and marching in unison, and the power of that.

0:06:31.7 Kevin Eckstrom: It’s all about freedom on the move. And if you look at the figures, the subtle differences in the same color, the woman figure is all in a pink and purple motif, but those shades of glass are slightly different to denote distance and depth.

0:06:47.9 Beth Harris: And so we see light pinks, darker pinks, lighter blues, darker blues. It’s much more complicated than it seems at first glance. We have standing figures who are facing us, we have figures who are marching in different directions. We have a figure in a wheelchair.

0:07:03.8 Kevin Eckstrom: And so this is actually the first depiction of disability anywhere in this cathedral. Again, that message that everybody has a role to play, everybody has a part.

0:07:12.8 Beth Harris: As I look at the glass at the very top of the windows, they seem almost explosive.

0:07:18.8 Kevin Eckstrom: And there’s a lot of movement. There’s the left to right movement, and then there’s the vertical movement. But then when you get to the sky, you’ve got this explosive movement. And if you look at how the signs are angled, that is also to convey a sense of movement. They’re not static.

0:07:33.2 Beth Harris: So he’s working with someone who’s helping him fabricate.

0:07:36.6 Kevin Eckstrom: Kerry James Marshall worked with Andrew Goldkuhle, who is a church craftsman. Kerry came up with the design, but then Andrew was the person who actually cut the glass, stitched it together with lead, and then there’s a whole lot of structural reinforcement that keeps these windows vertical.

0:07:53.4 Beth Harris: Part of the older windows remain above Kerry James Marshall’s windows.

0:07:58.3 Kevin Eckstrom: And that was actually a very deliberate decision by Kerry James Marshall. One is the breastplate of righteousness on the left, and the shield of faith on the right. Those are the only sort of religious elements to these windows. But righteousness and faith, that has a lot to do with the struggle that’s depicted here as well.

0:08:14.5 Beth Harris: Not inappropriately, the organ music started to play, and I’m reminded just of how stained glass windows are part of the fabric of a church. This is a space which is activated in a particular way. And the presence of these windows here in the cathedral have a special resonance that is enhanced by the poem that Elizabeth Alexander wrote, which is featured below the windows.

0:08:41.3 Kevin Eckstrom: So this poem, called American Song, will take the place of the memorial tablets to Lee and Jackson that were here before. And what’s interesting is the words that she uses. Imperfect, struggle, contested. And when you hear her say it, she’s talking about, let’s be honest about our history. Let’s be honest about who we are, and where we have been, and hopefully where we’re going. That was part of the problem with this original installation, was it was not very honest about either these men or our history. It’s a chance to tell a more expansive, inclusive story of who we are as a people, and hopefully, with this idea of freedom on the move, where we’re going.

0:09:20.3 Beth Harris: And a place where we all can feel welcome and see ourselves in the window.

0:09:25.5 Kevin Eckstrom: That’s the goal of this entire building, is that when people come here, they are able to see themselves, or somebody who looks like them, or somebody who shares their story in the artwork, in the people that they see, in the music that they hear. This is really a tangible way of trying to say what this cathedral values and what this cathedral believes in.

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