The Holy Virgin Mary

The Holy Virgin Mary
The painting on display behind a protective screen at the Sensation exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999–2000
Artist	Chris Ofili
Year	1996
Medium	Mixed media
Subject	The Virgin Mary
Dimensions	240 cm × 180 cm (96 in × 72 in)
Location	Museum of Modern Art, New York City

The Holy Virgin Mary is a mixed media painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996 that utilizes elephant dung and pornographic images. It was one of the works included in the Sensation exhibition in London, Berlin and New York in 1997–2000. The subject of the work, and its execution, caused considerable controversy in New York, with Rudolph Giuliani – then Mayor of New York City – describing Ofili's work as "sick".^[1] In 1998, Ofili was the first black artist to be awarded the Turner Prize. The painting was sold for £2.9 million in June 2015, and was gifted to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2018.