and Ivan Karp, and artist Robert Rauschenberg, to see the exhibit in the garage. Harry Lowe, the assistant director of the Smithsonian Art Museum, told the Washington Post that walking into the garage "was like opening Tut's tomb." The story of Hampton and his artwork finally became public in the December 15, 1964 issue of the Washington Post. Lowe paid Hampton's outstanding rent and took possession of the art display. In 1970, Hampton's work was donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where it has been on display ever since. In popular culture Author and poet Denis Johnson published a book with the name The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New, which includes a poem named after Hampton's work. In 2007, composer Jefferson Friedman premiered a musical piece inspired by Hampton's artwork titled "The Throne of the Third Heaven," commissioned jointly by the National Symphony Orchestra and the ASCAP Foundation. The indie music group Le Loup named their 2007 debut album The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. In 2015, author Shelley Pearsall published a young adult novel, The Seventh Most Important Thing, which put the artwork and the artist in a fictional context, imagining a meeting between Hampton and a troubled thirteen-year-old boy. The author says she was inspired by the fact that "for more than a decade, Hampton had labored alone, without fanfare, to create art for art's sake – a nearly impossible concept to grasp in today's world of rampant social-media sharing and instant celebrity." In 2018, Cheyenne/Arapaho author Tommy Orange published a short story, "The State," that references Hampton and The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. The story was an excerpted chapter from Orange’s 2018 novel There There. References "St. James the Janitor," Fortean Times #150, 2001 External links James Hampton - Smithsonian American Art Museum The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, exhibition label - Smithsonian American Art Museum 1909 births 1964 deaths 20th-century African-American artists 20th-century American artists United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II Artists from South Carolina Artists from Washington, D.C. Burials in South Carolina Collection of the Smithsonian Institution Deaths from stomach cancer Deaths from cancer in Washington, D.C. General Services Administration Janitors Outsider artists People from Elloree, South Carolina Undeciphered historical codes