"Home in Sight" honors the life and legacy of Dr. H. Phillip Venable, a pioneering ophthalmologist and advocate for social justice. Mother and son collaborators Oletha DeVane and Christopher Kojzar worked with ART Research and McFadden Art Glass to realize the art.
The sculpture represents Dr. Venable’s career in ophthalmology and his family’s journey toward home. Interwoven steel and glass reference the adaptive lens flipper, an instrument used to test and strengthen vision. Eyes and home façades are stamped into cast-glass rondels, inviting reflection on how we see, how we’re seen, and what gets shaped by discernment and judgment. The home façade is drawn from archival photographs of the Venables’ nearly completed house, which they were forced to abandon because of discriminatory housing practices.
In 1956, Dr. Venable, his wife Katie, and their daughter Louise purchased land in Creve Coeur, outside of St. Louis, with plans to build a home. White residents and City officials organized to prevent them from building on site. The Venables entered a three-year legal battle and their home and land were eventually taken through eminent domain and used to create the park where this memorial now stands. The sculpture abstracts the loss of a neighborhood’s grace and the continued search for home.
Dr. Venable became the first Black American to earn a master’s degree in ophthalmology from New York University and later achieved the highest recorded score on the American Board of Ophthalmology exam. He challenged hospitals that denied privileges to Black physicians and became the first African American medical doctor on the faculty of Washington University.
"Home in Sight" positions professional achievement against social barriers. It’s a celebration of Dr. Venable’s life that asks the local community to engage in its stewardship as a way to reinforce its message of social justice in American history.
