Radiant Livingness

Abstract This paper examines the Erol Beker Chapel of the Good Shepherd in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City, one of few extant immersive environments created by sculptor Louise Nevelson and the only one with explicitly Christian content. In the mid-1970s, Nevelson collaborated with Rev. Ralph Peterson, who commissioned the chapel within St. Peter’s, a new urban church in the Citicorp complex. Nevelson was able to pursue her idiosyncratic spirituality, expressed in a life-long exploration of the fourth dimension, which she considered a gateway to transformation. Peterson was able to work with “the greatest living American sculptor” on an inspirational space for meditation and ritual, for his Lutheran church dedicated to an arts and social-action ministry. The pastor and artist found common ground in the language of abstraction, creating a gleaming white space of joy and life. The paper provides a close reading of the iconography of the chapel’s sculptural components, meaning that is amplified by other designed elements, including lighting, pew arrangement, and a Nevelson-designed vestment. This paper also examines how the chapel functions in the twenty-first century as a religious space. After years of relative obscurity and benign neglect, the Chapel is today undergoing restoration and reassessment. It can once again fulfill its role as a space of radiant livingness.