The Pageant Sash Hiding Inside Dante's Inferno

Painter Meghann Stephenson has given hell its own coronation. Her new solo show, "Queen of the Neighborhood," walks the nine circles of Dante's underworld through the particular pageantry of suburban Catholic girlhood, where a title like "queen" could just as easily belong to a parish fundraiser as to eternal damnation. It is a clever bit of framing: purgatory dressed in the language of a crowning, judgment rendered through the small rituals and hierarchies of growing up in the pews. The show takes its cue from an old epic and dresses it in something closer to home.

With reporting from Harper's Bazaar.