First Things: Michael Linton writes:

The Episcopal cathedral in Chicago is hosting a display of the “Keiskamma Altarpiece.” Made by artists in Hamburg, South Africa, the altarpiece is a monumental needlework, combining fabric, beads, wire work and photographs, and reproduces the form and dimensions of Matthias Grüenewald’s circa 1515 “Isenheim Altarpiece.”

Described as a “message of hope for people who are contending with the devastation that AIDS has wrought in their lives in the midst of poverty and other hardships,” the work was first shown in North America last month in Toronto as part of the sixteenth International AIDS Conference. From Chicago it travels to UCLA, where it will be displayed in the university’s Prosser Museum of Art as part of the UCLA AIDS Project.

The cathedral has posted photographs of the altarpiece on its website. And although a good friend of mine at the cathedral tells me that the photos come nowhere near to doing the work justice, even on my computer screen it looks splendid.

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