In 2019, the Last Supper Sculpture was rediscovered behind a temporary dry wall at the Studio Acting Conservatory, formerly New Home Baptist Church, in the Columbia Heights community in Washington, D.C. This discovery ignited and renewed cultural conversations concerning the centering of Black life in general, and Black religious life in particular.

Last Supper Sculpture 3D AR Experience

The Center for the Study of African American Religious Life worked with the Smithsonian 3D Digitization Office to create a special 3D AR component for the Sculpture. This experience allows you to hang this impressive work of art on your own wall! 
 

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that allows us to experience virtual objects in our real-world space as viewed through a cellphone or other mobile device. The screen displays your environment through its camera and superimposes the virtual object on top. As you move around the object, it stays in place as if it were actually there with you. Some solutions even include virtual shadows and lighting to match your space. The Smithsonian 3D team has created an AR solution that works directly from your web browser, no apps or downloads required. Within the AR Last Supper Sculpture experience, visitors are able to learn (through two tours) about the history of the sculpture, the artist, the rediscovery and 3D imaging process, and more. 

Instructions to engage with 3D AR Model

1. On your mobile device, tap the AR button in the upper left corner of the 3D experience window.

2. You'll see a prompt to wave your phone around. This allows your device to scan the environment and find a suitable area to place the AR object. Finding walls is a particular challenge for AR technologies, so be persistent! 

3. Once a wall is found, the object will be placed on it. The mural is quite large so it will initially appear at 20% scale. Use a pinch motion to scale the model up to see its true size!

Select an area to view more

About the Artist

Akili Ron Anderson

AfriCOBRA artist Akili Ron Anderson used men, women, and children from the congregation of New Home Baptist Church as inspiration for the disciples’ faces, creating a work of art that invites everyone to the table. The sculpture is an aesthetic testimony to the importance of seeing oneself in one’s environment.

Black Christ in 21st Century Media

Creating Black Christ in the 21st century requires a reimagining and a replacement of the religious and societal image of a European man with light eyes and long-flowing light-colored hair that has existed for centuries.

Constructing Black Messiahs

In the 1960s, during the civil rights movement, as protest erupted over desegregation and equal rights; there was another dispute brewing over the “true” face of Jesus. With billions of replicates of what was known as the central figure of the Christian faith, the white Christ, African Americans, and other minorities began to grapple with whether it was reasonable or sensible to worship and esteem a blue-eyed, white God, particularly as several religious scholars began to research, present, and publish materials that indicated Jesus’ presence in Africa.

This exhibition is presented by the Center for the Study of African American Religious Life (CSAARL) and generously funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc.