Chapel of the Good Shepherd (Louise Nevelson)
Chapel of the Good Shepherd (also known as Nevelson Chapel) is a sculptural environment installation by the American 20th-century artist Louise Nevelson completed in 1977 and located at the St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City. The church and the chapel are part of the Citigroup Center at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

History

Commission 
Originally commissioned in 1975, the chapel was donated by parishioner Erol Beker and dedicated on December 13, 1977. Louise Nevelson, an American sculptor, gained prominence for her abstract and dark monochromatic three-dimensional installations usually made with wood or metal. The resulting space was a five-sided sanctuary space featuring 24 seats, measuring  and is adorned with a variety of abstract sculptural elements. These included reliefs and columns made of wood and painted in white, with an altarpiece made of "gold leaf over a Masonite panel" placed in the middle.

Much of the material used in the work consisted of found objects and wood pieces from New York City streets. During the chapel's construction, Nevelson said: “If people can have a moment of peace and carry it with them in their memory banks, then that will be a great success for me”. When she was asked about her role in creating a Christian sanctuary space as a Jewish artist, Nevelson responded that the abstract quality of her work "transcended" traditional denominational barriers.

Reception and later years 

Nevelson's work has been praised for creating a meditative place in the middle of a busy urban environment. According to researcher Caitlin Turski Watson, the chapel "operates as a counter-hegemonic form of privately owned public space—the sacred public space". Art historian Marchita Mauck described the Nevelson Chapel as a "healing place" where the "stark simplicity" of its environment "conveys strength, presence, [and] peace".

Others have argued that the artist's ability to combine the artist's "characteristic abstraction" with "evocative Christian iconography" results in "symbolic archetypes" that could attract an audience of different faiths. Nevelson's work has also been compared to other 20th-century chapels designed by modern artists, most notably the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence by the French 20th-century artist Henri Matisse and built between 1947 and 1951, in illustrating how "modern architectural forms can engage people in transformative experiences". The Nevelson Chapel underwent a renovation in the 1980s and was later restored again between 2018 and 2019 by Kostow Greenwood Architects as part of a US$ 5.75 million project.

See also 

 Louise Nevelson Plaza
 List of public art in New York City
 Architecture of New York City
 Commission (art)

References 

Churches in New York City
Abstract sculpture
Modern art
Installation art
Art in New York City
Architecture in New York City