The Throne Enthroned

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly opens today at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Little is known about James Hampton, despite the grandeur of his chosen title, "Director, Special Projects for the State of Eternity." He was born in 1909 in Elloree, South Carolina, a small community of predominantly African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers. His father, a gospel singer and self-ordained Baptist minister, left his wife and four children to pursue his itinerant calling.

In 1928, when he was nineteen, Hampton moved to Washington, D.C., to live with an older brother. Steady employment eluded Hampton throughout the Depression. Drafted into the Army in 1942, he served with a segregated unit that maintained airstrips in Saipan and Guam during World War II. Hampton returned to Washington in 1945, and began working a year later for the General Services Administration as a janitor. Although he expressed interest in finding "a holy woman," he never married and had few close friends.

As early as 1931, Hampton believed that he began receiving visions from God, and by 1945 he had made one small, shrine-like object while stationed on Guam. His work on The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly probably began in earnest around 1950, when he rented an alleyway stable in his northwest Washington neighborhood, also the city's center of black business, religious, and night life since the turn of the century. Hampton worked almost every day on his project after completing his janitorial duties around midnight until he died in 1964, cutting short his hopes to retire and open The Throne as the site of a storefront ministry.

This work is on extended loan to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center while the Smithsonian American Art Museum's historic building is being renovated.

Source: Lynda Hartigan. The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).

Pictured: James Hampton, (1909–1964), The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly,about 1950–64, gold and silver aluminum foil, Kraft paper, and plastic over wood furniture paperboard, and glass, 180 pieces in overall configuration: 10 1/2 x 27 x 14 1/2 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of anonymous donors.