ATHENS, GA.- Thanks to a generous loan from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as part of Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia is displaying plates from Julie Green’s “The Last Supper” series through August 16. Green painted each secondhand ceramic plate with cobalt blue mineral paint to illustrate death row inmates’ final meal requests as well as the state and date of their execution. Green, who used gender-neutral pronouns, planned to create 50 plates every year until they reached 1,000 plates or until capital punishment was abolished — whichever came first. They completed the thousandth plate in September 2021, one month before their death.

Of the 1,000 plates, the Georgia Museum has selected 377 that focus on the Southeast and neighboring states, encouraging local viewers to consider how their region has been impacted by capital punishment.

“The goal was to create an immersive experience that communicates both the repetition and gravity of the practice itself,” said David Odo, the museum’s director and the curator of the display. “Even in a reduced number, the accumulation of plates conveys the scale of the work and the persistence of the system it documents.”

Green was born in Yokosuka, Japan, in 1961. They grew up with their mother in Des Moines, Iowa, following their parents’ separation, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kansas, in Lawrence. In their artist statement, they reflected on early influences: “Growing up in Iowa, I admired family quilts and ukiyo-e prints at home and the neighbor’s yard with larger-than-life historical figures and 20’ American flag made with ears of colored corn. An appreciation for the homemade and handmade led me to paint blue food.”

A 1999 Oklahoma newspaper clipping that described a man’s final moments before execution inspired Green to begin “The Last Supper” series. Despite the crimes that the man had committed, the comforting quality of his food selections reminded Green of dinners with their family and humanized him in their eyes. The centrality of food in “The Last Supper” humanizes death row inmates to the public and encourages viewers to consider their relationship to the U.S. prison system.

“Food carries powerful associations with care, ritual, culture and comfort. In ‘The Last Supper,’ these meanings sit in tension with the realities of incarceration and execution. The meals depicted are often ordinary — even banal — which heightens the unsettling contrast between everyday human needs and the finality of state-sanctioned capital punishment,” shared Odo. “By centering food as the primary visual subject, the work encourages viewers to reflect on how the prison system manages bodies and lives, even in moments framed as gestures of compassion or dignity.”

“The Last Supper” makes abstract ideas about the ethics of capital punishment concrete by drawing attention away from the spectacle of crime and towards the universal, life-sustaining act of eating, thereby humanizing death row inmates. Green’s work is installed in the museum’s Phoebe and Ed Forio Gallery, in its permanent collection wing, alongside decorative arts from its collection that relate to rituals of eating. An industrial-style desk in the gallery holds a comment book in which visitors can share their reactions. Three plates from Green’s “First Meal” series also appear. This much smaller series, painted in color, illustrates the first meals after release of exonerated people and the circumstances around those meals.