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Docent helps visitors feast on Chapel’s artistry

Longtime chapel tour guide will take a sabbatical when sanctuary closes in May

Olli Chapel

Lois Oliver, head docent of Duke University Chapel, gives Beth Jarrard a behind-the-scenes view Monday from the triforium of the chapel overlooking the Benjamin N. Duke Flentrop Organ. Oliver, a Duke associate clinical professor emerita of pediatrics, highlighted the history of the chapel and its neo-Gothic artistry in her Osher Lifelong Learning Institute class, “Building Duke Chapel.” Thirty-four OLLI at Duke members got an opportunity to see the chapel up close before the main sanctuary closes beginning in mid-May for a year of renovations. 

On the tour, Oliver stated how the afternoon sun shining through the stained glass windows dappled strokes of blue and red color across the limestone piers. She says every major Bible story is represented in the 77 windows.

Oliver will take a sabbatical -- her first since becoming a docent in 1997 -- while the chapel’s original 1932 roof is replaced and acoustical ceiling tiles are rehabilitated.

Weekday and Sunday tours will continue until graduation week in May. Visitors can either arrange, in advance, to have a docent tour of the chapel or sightsee on their own.

To join the Sunday tour, meet the docent near the front steps of the chapel following the Sunday service, at approximately 12:15 p.m. The tours focus on the interior of the Chapel, and usually run for 30 to 45 minutes.