ICMA at AAH 2022: Rethinking Royal Manuscripts in a Global Middle Ages, Thursday 7 April 2022

ICMA at the Association for Art History’s 48th Annual Conference
6-8 April 2022
Digital Event

 

Rethinking Royal Manuscripts in a Global Middle Ages
Thursday, 7 April 2022, Day 2
All day session, 9:55 - 17:15 BST


Click HERE for full conference website

Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ Enthroned, frontispiece in Kitāb al-Aghānī (Book of Songs) of Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani (Istanbul: National Library of Turkey [Milli Kütüphane]), ca. 1218

Organized by
Jacopo Gnisci, University College London
Umberto Bongianino, University of Oxford

 

This panel sets out to examine and compare the impact of royal patronage on the visual, material, and textual features of manuscripts produced across Africa, Asia, Mesoamerica and Europe during the ‘Global Middle Ages.’ As polysemic and multi-technological objects, royal manuscripts were produced in different forms and sizes, and from a variety of materials that could vary according to the taste, wealth, ideology, religion, and connections of their patrons and makers. Their visual and textual content could conform or deviate from existing traditions to satisfy the needs and ambitions of those involved in their production and consumption. Finally, pre-existing manuscripts could be appropriated, restored, enhanced, gifted, and even worshipped by ruling elites for reasons connected with legitimacy and self-preservation, becoming powerful instruments of hegemony, or symbols of prestige and piety. Because of this semiotic versatility, written artifacts provide ideal vantage points for understanding the agency of material culture in the creation and perpetuation of political power.

To what extent do the materials, texts, and images of royal manuscripts reflect the integration of pre-modern courts in networks of patronage and exchange? In which ways were these features adapted for different audiences and for female, male, or genderqueer patrons? How did they inform local and transregional notions of power and authority? How did communities that opposed royal authority situate themselves in relation to the political agency of written texts and their illustrations? When and how did such artifacts become imperial relics to be displayed, or symbols of a contentious past to be concealed or destroyed? What can manuscripts tell us about the royal patronage of other artistic media, dynastic rivalries, political alliances, and state-endorsed religious phenomena?

In pursuing similar questions, we are particularly interested in multidisciplinary papers that move beyond a Eurocentric reading of material culture by considering royal manuscripts from pre-modern polities traditionally seen as ‘peripheral.’ We welcome proposals that apply innovative methodologies to the study of handwritten material and its circulation, questioning conventional assumptions about politics, culture, and religion, and privileging comparative approaches and transcultural artistic phenomena.


 

Speakers


Western Aspirations in Royal Armenian Manuscripts from the Cilician Kingdom
Emma Chookaszian (Paul Valéry University, Montpellier)

Patronage and Political Reflections in Late Medieval Georgian Art: The Case Study of Illuminated Charters
Eter Edisherashvili (G. Chubinashvili National Research Centre for Georgian Art History and Heritage Preservation, Tbilisi)

Inside Out Borders: Production and Circulation of Aviz Royal Court Illuminated Manuscripts During the Fifteenth Century
Catarina Isabel Martins Tibúrcio (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

A Monstrous Assemblage: Trajectories of Sovereignty in a Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Manuscript
Saygin Salgirli (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)

Noble Ladies of the Painted Page: Overlooked Expressions of Female-Led Legitimacy in a Timurid Illustrated Manuscript
Meghan Clorinda Montgomery (Independent Researcher)

Illuminating the Queen’s World: Ovide moralisé as Miroir des reines
Christopher T. Richards (New York University)

Reimagining Southern Italy in the Liber ad honorem Augusti (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 120 II)
Elvira Miceli (Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford)

The Power of Manuscripts or Manuscripts of Power: The Promulgation of a Visual Identity at the Ḥafṣid Court in Tunis (c. 1440 to 1468)
Laura Hinrichsen (Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin)

Mining the Collection: "Crusades and Canivet: Curious Treasures from the Walters Art Museum" with Lynley Anne Herbert and Christine Sciacca on 30 March 2022 at 11am. Register today!

Mining the Collection
Crusades and Canivet: Curious Treasures from the Walters Art Museum with Lynley Anne Herbert, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts & Curatorial Chair, and Christine Sciacca, Curator of European Art, 300-1400 CE

Wednesday 30 March 2022, 11am ET
Register HERE

De Bar Hours, W.93, Northeast France (Lorraine), ca. 1310, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Nearly a century after its founding, the Walters Art Museum continues to be a place of remarkable discovery, with tantalizingly strange objects haunting the storage shelves. Join Dr. Lynley Anne Herbert, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts & Curatorial Chair, and Dr. Christine Sciacca, Curator of European Art, 300-1400 CE, as they explore two mysterious medieval oddities: a bronze figure of unknown origin possibly representing a crusader, and a lace-cut manuscript with no known precedent.  

Register HERE
 

 

In case you missed it...


You can watch a selection of previous Mining the Collection events here: https://www.medievalart.org/mining-the-collection

Statement on the Past and Present of Ukraine and its Cultural Heritage

Statement on the Past and Present of Ukraine and its Cultural Heritage – from the International Center of Medieval Art and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America
 


March 1, 2022

As scholarly organizations devoted to the study and preservation of the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages, the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) deplore the Russian attacks on Ukraine and the continuing threat to human life, artistic treasures, and cultural heritage. We object strongly to the statements of the President of the Russian Federation, V. V. Putin, published in his July 2021 essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” While the title ostensibly conveys fraternity, the real aim of Putin’s essay was to delegitimize Ukraine as a country. This has been part of Russia’s ongoing attempts to falsify Ukrainian history and reclaim its sites and monuments. Putin has made a tendentious case that Moscow is the legitimate heir to the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus’, “continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood,” whereas the Ukrainian nation is the product of various “distorting” influences emerging from the West. Putin’s speech of February 21, 2022 further declared that Ukraine had no legitimacy as a nation-state, and laid claim to its cultural heritage as “an inalienable part of our [the Russian Federation’s] own history, culture and spiritual space.” While the history of Ukraine is integral to Russia’s territorial, spiritual, and ideological identity, Ukraine’s identity is not reducible to being a precursor to Russia. Ukraine’s unique history, art, and culture should be acknowledged, respected, and protected in these troubling times.

All too often, our own fields have been complicit in failing to examine inherited narratives that subsume the Ukrainian people, their history, and monuments under the rubric of “Russia,” thus helping to facilitate the historical distortions made more explicitly by President Putin. While acknowledging the irreducible complexity of the intertwined histories of Russia and Ukraine, we also recognize the right of Ukraine to the cultural patrimony of its own territory. The monuments of Kyivan Rus’ in Kyiv, Chernihiv, and elsewhere, are treasures of the Eastern Christian tradition and of the world’s cultural heritage. They are rightly safeguarded and administered by the legitimately elected government of Ukraine and by its cultural ministries and private institutions. Moreover, as historians, we underscore the very diversity of the region that Putin’s essay belittled. Like most medieval locales, Ukraine was home to peoples of different ethnic groups and religious faiths. Jewish, Islamic, and Armenian communities, among others, were integral to cultural life in the area in the Middle Ages, and their art and architecture endures within Ukraine’s borders. We also affirm the continued diversity of its modern nation-state, as well as the LGBTQIA+ communities in the country, who face great dangers under the Russian invasion. We stand with our colleagues whose nuanced work on Ukraine’s history poses the greatest challenges to Putin’s monolithic and mythical view of history.

We earnestly call for the withdrawal of Russian forces from the territory of Ukraine, for the protection of all people in the region, and for the restitution of cultural patrimony to its legitimate custodians.

  • The Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Associates, and Advocacy Committee of the International Center of Medieval Art

  • The Governing Board of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America

ICMA Student Travel Grants - due Sunday 27 March 2022

STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS

The ICMA offers grants for graduate students in the early stages of their dissertation research, enabling beginning scholars to carry out foundational investigations at archives and sites. Winners will be granted $3,000, and if needed, officers of the ICMA will contact institutions and individuals who can help the awardees gain access to relevant material. Three grants are awarded per year, and they are designed to cover one month of travel. 

The grants are primarily for students who have finished preliminary exams, and are in the process of refining dissertation topics. Students who have already submitted a proposal, but are still very early on in the process of their research, may also apply.  

All applicants must be ICMA members.

Applicants must submit:
1.  Outline of the thesis proposal in 800 words or less.

2.  Detailed outline of exactly which sites and/or archives are to be visited, which works will be consulted, and how this research relates to the proposed thesis topic. If you hope to see extremely rare materials or sites with restricted access, please be as clear as possible about contacts with custodians already made.

3.  Proposed budget (airfare, lodging, other travel, per diem). Please be precise and realistic. The total need not add up to $3,000 precisely. The goal is for reviewers to see how you will handle the expenses.

4.  Letter from the thesis advisor, clarifying the student’s preparedness for the research, the significance of the topic, and the relevance of the trip to the thesis.

5.  A curriculum vitae.                  

Upon return, the student will be required to submit a letter and financial report to the ICMA and a narrative to the student section of the Newsletter.

NOTE: Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and closures, we can delay disbursements until international travel is safe.

Applications are due by Sunday 27 March 2022. The ICMA will announce the winners of the three grants at the Spring Board Meeting in May.

Applicants submit materials HERE.
Thesis advisor submit letter of recommendation HERE.

Email Ryan Frisinger at awards@medievalart.org with any questions.

ICMA Graduate Student Essay Award - due 27 March 2022

GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY AWARDS

The International Center of Medieval Art wishes to announce its annual Graduate Student Essay Award for the best essay by a student member of the ICMA.  The theme or subject of the essay may be any aspect of medieval art, and can be drawn from current research.  Eligible essays must be produced while a student is in coursework.  The work must be original and should not have been published elsewhere.  We are pleased to offer First Prize ($400), Second Prize ($200), and Third Prize ($100).

We are grateful to an anonymous donor for underwriting the Student Essay Award competition. This member particularly encourages submissions that consider themes of intercultural contact — for instance, between Latin Christendom and the Byzantine realm; among Jews, Muslims, and Christians; or the dynamics of encounters connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia. These are not requirements, however, and the awards will be granted based on quality of the papers, regardless of topic.

The deadline for submission is Sunday 27 March 2022.  The winners will be announced at the Spring Board Meeting in May.

Applicants must submit:

1.  An article-length paper (maximum 30 pages, double-spaced, not including footnotes) following the editorial guidelines of our journal Gesta.

2.  Each submission must also include a 250-word abstract written in English regardless of the language of the rest of the paper.

3.   A Curriculum vitae.

All applicants must be ICMA members.
All submissions are to be uploaded HERE for 2022.

Email questions to Ryan Frisinger at awards@medievalart.org. The winning essay will be chosen by members of the ICMA Grants and Awards Committee, which is chaired by our Vice-President.



ANNOUNCEMENT OF IDEA INITIATIVES AND DEVELOPMENTS

In fall 2020, the ICMA formed a new administrative body, the IDEA (Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) Committee. The committee is chaired by Andrea Achi and Joseph Ackley, and committee members are Paroma Chatterjee, Bryan Keene, Ellen Shortell, Thelma Thomas, Alexa Amore, Meg Bernstein, Adam Levine, Erika Loic, and Risham Majeed.

The IDEA committee can be reached at idea@medievalart.org.

In November 2020, the IDEA Committee organized an online Town Hall called the ICMA Town Hall on Diversity, Medieval Art History, and 2020. Over one hundred ICMA members participated in this event, which served as a productive forum for listening, brainstorming, and discussing issues of diversity and inclusivity and how they pertain to our practices and our work as medieval art historians.

Following this event, the IDEA Committee collaborated with other ICMA committees to plan, develop, and implement many of the suggestions and requests voiced at the 2020 Town Hall.

We write to you now to update you on work undertaken by ICMA committees over the course of 2021, inspired by the 2020 Town Hall and other collaborations with the IDEA Committee. The links below connect you to videos of ICMA committee chairs talking about these initiatives. We hope that the opportunity to hear directly from our committee chairs not only will provide useful information about IDEA-inspired developments at the ICMA, but also will demonstrate and demystify the workings of the organization in general, for those who do not serve on committees.

Please explore the videos from:

A few highlights of the ICMA’s IDEA-inspired initiatives are:

  • Holding mentoring sessions on applying to graduate school, fellowship applications, publication, and navigating the job market

  • Encouraging submissions to Gesta on topics dealing with areas that are currently underrepresented in the journal, including Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Islamic world, broadly defined, and art made for Jewish communities

  • Broadening the make-up of the Gesta Editorial Board in terms of demographics, age, locale, and areas of research

  • Instituting an Advocacy Seed Grant, focused on public-facing scholarly engagement

  • Widening the content and revising the organization of our library of open access Digital Resources for Teaching Medieval Art History, with IDEA issues in mind

  • Funding grant applications for projects geared toward wide audiences, on topics addressing the medieval world expansively defined, and from scholars of diverse backgrounds working at a range of types of institutions

  • Sponsoring conference sessions and lectures on topics concerning medieval art around the globe

  • Organizing online events on Queer Medieval Art History

  • Expanding participation on the Student Committee (now with members on four continents!)

  • Rebranding of the ICMA Instagram account, so that it serves as a showcase for student research, while also addressing themes of race, gender identity, sexuality, climate change, and other issues pertinent to the academy today

Plans are underway for a 2022 IDEA Town Hall to be held online early in spring.

As always, we are eager to do whatever we can to help you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with questions or suggestions.

Nina Rowe, President
Ryan Frisinger, Executive Director (icma@medievalart.org)

ICMA announces the 2021 ICMA Annual Book Prize recipient

ICMA Annual Book Prize


We are delighted to announce the recipient of the 2021 ICMA Annual Book Prize:

Jessica Barker
Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture

Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, Boydell Press, 2020.
Click here for the Boydell site

Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in medieval England, double tomb brass memorials and recumbent effigies of couples supplied far more than monuments to deceased lay patrons or matrons. The double tomb, as Jessica Barker compellingly argues in this first holistic volume devoted to the topic, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture, materializes entangled records of fluid social boundaries during an age of social transformation following the Black Death. These funerary monuments complicate biographical readings as the depicted are diachronically to be counted both amongst the living and the dead, supply the mise-en-scène for grief and public funerary practices, and commemorate multiple marital unions or various forms of homosocial and perhaps even homosexual bonds. Rather than pure funerary monuments, double tombs by their very nature became sites of veneration recalling the exploits of deceased royals, extreme dissonance as surviving spouses witnessed their effigies for up to a generation, and an idealized fantasy of affective devotion, as both pre- and postmortem couples clutched to medieval funerary tradition and often one another. This impeccably researched book offers a pristine model of how a kaleidoscopic, holistic reexamination of medieval funerary practice, and in particular the visual culture of the double tomb, can unveil the affections and aspirations of late medieval men and women, resurrect portions of their lost identities, exemplify the legal bonds of medieval matrimony, and empathetically invigorate the changing theological and socio-political ideals to which these funerary monuments allude.

We thank the ICMA Book Prize Jury:
Eric Ramirez-Weaver (Chair), Péter Bokody, Till-Holger Borchert, Dorothy Glass, and Julie Harris

ICMA Pop-Up in Beaune, France on 19 March 2022 - Register today!

ICMA Pop-Up in Beaune, France

Le Bon, le Téméraire et le Chancelier - Quand flamboyait la Toison d’Or
Saturday 19 March 2022
14.00 - 18.00

Dear ICMA Members,

An ICMA Pop-Up event is taking place near you soon!

The exhibition Le Bon, le Téméraire et le Chancelier - Quand flamboyait la Toison d’Or in Beaune, is a major event in which artworks and objects from the Burgundian court in the 14th and 15th centuries are displayed in three locations in the city. On view are over one-hundred-and-fifty exhibits – including paintings, sculptures, goldsmith's and silversmith's work, tapestries, manuscripts, archival documents, and armor – from private and public collections in Europe. Taking place in buildings and spaces that were founded and used by members of the court, the exhibition emphasizes the three key figures of Duke Philip the Good (1396-1467), Duke Charles the Bald (1433-1477), and the chancellor Nicolas Rolin.

Le Bon, le Téméraire et le Chancelier closes on 31 March. Further information regarding the exhibition is found in this link.

You are invited to join other ICMA Members at the exhibition on Saturday 19 March, from 14:00 until 18:00.

This gathering is informal:

  • Attendees are responsible for their own travel bookings, museum reservations & admission fees, and compliance with local pandemic restrictions.

  • The purpose of this event is to introduce ICMA members from the area to one another, to strengthen the social and professional ties in our community, and to celebrate our mutual interest in medieval art, while exploring the exhibition together.

  • The event organizer, Masha Goldin, will be in touch with those who register with details on meet up spots.

Please register HERE. We hope to see you there!

For inquiries, please contact Masha Goldin, ICMA Membership Committee: masha.goldin@unibas.ch


Organized by
Masha Goldin

Register HERE

ICMA Online Lecture by Susan L'Engle at The Andrew Ladis Memorial Trecento Conference: Bologna Redux: A Fresh Look at the Beginnings of Legal Manuscript Illumination; 13 January 2022 - register today!

Bologna Redux: A Fresh Look at the Beginnings of Legal Manuscript Illumination
Presented by Susan L’Engle, professor emerita, Saint Louis University 
Thursday, January 13, 6:00–7:00 p.m. CST

Register HERE

Nicolò di Giacomo di Nascimbene, called Nicolò da Bologna (documented 1349–1403). Leaf from Giovanni d’Andrea, Novella in Decretales (detail): Frontispiece for Book 4, The Marriage, ca. 1355–60. Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment, 17 1/2 x 10 3/4 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Rosenwald Collection, 1961.17.5

Textbooks made for law professors and students, lawyers, and judges represent a major category of manuscripts made in the northern Italian city of Bologna in the late Middle Ages. Hundreds of examples survive, and in them we find distinctive page layouts, illuminated courtroom scenes and illustrations of societal regulations, and the marginal annotations of readers. Susan L’Engle has spent her academic career studying Bolognese legal manuscripts of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. In this lecture presented in conjunction with the exhibition Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City, Dr. L’Engle takes us on a journey of how she first became interested in these complex and sophisticated books and the avenues of research that she has since pursued as she seeks to understand medieval legal iconography, the ways scribes and artists worked in service to Bologna’s university, and how students in this period engaged with texts and images in the classroom as they learned and memorized the law. 

Susan L’Engle, PhD, is a professor emerita of Saint Louis University and former assistant director of the Vatican Film Archive Library. The author of numerous essays on canon and Roman law manuscripts and a specialist in Bolognese illumination, she co-curated the exhibition Illuminating the Law: Medieval Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge Collections (2001) and co-authored its catalogue. She contributed the essay “Learning the Law in Medieval Bologna: The Production and Use of Illuminated Legal Manuscripts” to the catalogue for the Frist Art Museum exhibition Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City.


For more information and to register:
https://fristartmuseum.org/event/bologna-redux/


This lecture is supported in part by the International Center of Medieval Art.

QUEER MEDIEVAL ART II: TALKING CIRCLE AND RESEARCH WORKSHOP; FRIDAY, JANUARY 21ST, 2022  - REGISTER TODAY!

QUEER MEDIEVAL ART II: TALKING CIRCLE AND RESEARCH WORKSHOP

FRIDAY, JANUARY 21ST, 2022 
ONLINE: 9AM PT / 12PM ET / 6PM CET

REGISTER HERE

Christ and Saint John the Evangelist, 1300-1320. Germany, Swabia, near Bodensee (Lake Constance); Polychromed and gilded oak. 92.7 x 64.5 x 28.8 cm (36 1/2 x 25 3/8 x 11 5/16 in.). Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, The Cleveland Museum of Art. 1928.753

Following up on the event Queer Medieval Art: Past, Present, and Future that took place in August 2021, the ICMA will host a forum for further conversation among our membership with the goal of building a global professional network for those engaged in any facet of queer medieval art history. The event will open with remarks from our colleague Gerry Guest and then will go on with two breakout rooms: a talking circle focused on sharing experiences in the field and career guidance (breakout room 1) and a workshop for informal presentation and discussion of in-progress research related to queer medieval art and methodologies (breakout room 2). This event will not be recorded. Attendees will be asked to submit questions and topics for discussion in breakout room 1 or images for discussion in breakout room 2 in the Registration Form, though advance submission of questions or images is not required in order to attend.

The event is co-organized by the ICMA’s Programs & Lectures Committee and the IDEA (Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, & Accessibility) Committee.

For questions, please contact Bryan Keene, Bryan.Keene@rcc.edu.

Please register HERE.

ICMA-Pop-Ups Nashville: Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City, 22 January 2022

ICMA-POP-UPS IN NASHVILLE

FRIST ART MUSEUM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 2022
3:00 P.M.

ICMA members are warmly invited to an informal gathering at the Frist Art Museum on Saturday, January 22, beginning at 3:00 p.m. to view Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City. Trinita Kennedy, Senior Curator, will give a brief introduction to the exhibition and highlight different objects within the show. Attendees will then be welcome to roam the galleries and join a casual discussion at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free for up to 20 people.

The Frist Art Museum requires that visitors wear masks. 

Those who would like to continue the conversation afterward may gather for drinks and eats at Lou/Na on the twenty-fifth floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, located directly across the street from the Frist Art Museum. The restaurant has a balcony with heaters and firepits. 

Organizers
Gilbert Jones, Student Committee Co-Chair, ICMA
Trinita Kennedy, Senior Curator, Frist Art Museum

Register HERE

Nerio (active late 13th–early 14th centuries). Cutting from a choirbook (antiphonary): Easter Scenes (in initial A), ca. 1315. Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment, 9 3/8 x 9 3/8 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Rogers Fund, 12.56.1

Mining the Collection with Raymond Clemens, Curator, Early Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library, Yale University; Monday, December 13, 1pm ET

Mining the Collection with Raymond Clemens, Curator, Early Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library, Yale University

Monday, December 13, 1pm ET
Register HERE

The Beinecke Apocalypse, fourteenth-century Italy (Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 1215, fols. 28v-29r)

Yale's Beinecke Library has a treasure trove of little studied medieval illuminated manuscripts, many of them acquired in the last decade. In this session of Mining the Collection, virtual attendees will be introduced to a selection of these books with the express purpose of encouraging members of the ICMA community to address the materials in research and teaching. A full bibliography will be distributed after the session. Among the manuscripts and types to be presented will be:

The Beinecke Apocalypse
This unusual manuscript from fourteenth-century Italy most closely recalls an apocalyptic block book with images organized into panels on many pages.

Nonnenarbeiten
We are expanding our holdings in creations by late medieval German nuns and we are excited to broaden awareness of our new acquisitions.

Books of Hours and other late medieval Prayerbooks
In 2014 we acquired the Otto Ege archive. This collection contains not only remnants of Ege’s “biblioclasm” but also 62 codices, 22 of which are Books of Hours.

The Voynich Manuscript
Although it has been the darling of conspiracy theorists since the early twentieth century, there are still many mysteries to this manuscript, including its curious illuminated cycle.

Register HERE

For questions, please contact icma@medievalart.org

Three exhibitions, six gatherings with curators; December 17, register now!

Will you be in New York this holiday season? 
We’d love to see you on December 17, 2021 — uptown, downtown, all around town!

Three exhibitions, six gatherings with curators, you mix and match.

About the event 
This season in New York we celebrate a trio of medieval exhibitions, curated by ICMA members:

  • Spain, 1000-1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith, at the Met Cloisters, curated by Julia Perratore

  • The Good Life: Collecting Late Antique Art at the Met, at the Met Fifth Avenue, curated by Andrea Achi

  • Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 800-1500, at the Morgan Library and Museum, curated by Joshua O’Driscoll and Jeffrey Hamburger

The curators of the shows have graciously agreed to host informal conversations in the galleries on a single day, Friday, December 17. In order to serve as many of our members as possible, we have scheduled slots at the various exhibitions throughout that day, as follows:

10am   The Cloisters with Julia Perratore
The Met with Andrea Achi

1pm     The Cloisters with Julia Perratore
             The Morgan with Joshua O’Driscoll

4pm     The Met with Andrea Achi
The Morgan with Joshua O’Driscoll

6pm informal gathering at a TBD venue in Midtown

Due to the uncertainties of the pandemic and the challenges of confirming vaccinations for participants, we are keeping this program casual. We arrange for the curators to be in the galleries at fixed times, you register for slots and coordinate with your friends and colleagues about the structure of your schedule. We will be in touch with attendees about museum admission fees.

Space is limited, so act now! Since we want to keep participation open to as many ICMA members as possible, we ask that you please register only for sessions you know you can attend. And do let us know if your plans change, so we can fill open slots.

Register HERE

New York law requires that all museum visitors be vaccinated against COVID-19. Be sure that you understand the regulations for each institution you plan to visit:

 Due to the pandemic, the museums must limit capacity and are requiring timed entry. Once you have reserved your slots for the ICMA gallery gatherings please reserve tickets at the museums you will be visiting:

 
For questions or special needs, please contact: icma@medievalart.org

COMMON THREADS: TEXTILES AT THE FRONTIERS OF FAITH, A Virtual Scholars' Event on 10 November 2021 - REGISTER TODAY

COMMON THREADS: TEXTILES AT THE FRONTIERS OF FAITH

A Virtual Scholars’ Event for the Exhibition at The Met Cloisters Spain, 1000–1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith

Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the International Center of Medieval Art


WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2021, 1:00–2:30 PM ET

REGISTER HERE

Textile Fragment from the Shrine of San Librada, Sigüenza Cathedral, Spain, first half 12th century. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 58.85.1). [Funds from various donors, 1958]

The sumptuous patterned silk textiles produced in the multifaith medieval Iberian Peninsula, objects of great value as well as desire, played a paramount role in facilitating interactions among elite consumers, no matter their beliefs. Rare and precious surviving medieval Iberian fiber arts evoke for modern audiences a variety of social, political, and economic relationships, yet there is still much to be discovered from the fragments that remain. This virtual scholars’ event, convened in conjunction with the exhibition Spain, 1000–1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith, takes a close (occasionally microscopic!) look at some of the most important silks surviving from the eleventh through thirteenth centuries.


Introduction: Textiles at the Frontiers of Faith
Julia Perratore, Assistant Curator, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition’s curator provides an overview of select textiles included in the exhibition.


The Textile Turn in Medieval Iberian Studies
María Judith Feliciano, Independent Scholar, New York

Using the textile fragments currently on view in the Fuentidueña Chapel gallery, we explore multiple interpretative possibilities relating to materiality, contexts, and histories.


Distinctive Technical Features of Iberian Textiles—The Met Collection
Janina Poskrobko, Conservator in Charge, Department of Textile Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This presentation, from the perspective of a textile conservator, introduces a group of magnificent textiles in The Met collection, which were produced in the Iberian Peninsula during the medieval period. Their striking appearance and exceptional craftsmanship are the result of traditional weaving (ranging from simple slit-tapestry to compound weaves including samite, taqueté, and lampas), enriched with innovative techniques introduced by Nasrid weavers.


Register HERE. For questions, please email icma@medievalart.org.

2021 ICMA Stahl Lecture with Bissera Pentcheva, 8 and 12 November 2021 - register today!

2021 ICMA Stahl Lecture
 

Eternal Victory: Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Vision of Empire
Bissera Pentcheva, Stanford University

Monday 8 November 2021
5:00 pm MT (7:00 pm ET, 6:00 pm CT, 4:00 PT)

Register HERE


Image, Chant, and Imagination at Ste. Foy in Conques 
Bissera Pentcheva, Stanford University

Friday 12 November 2021
1:30pm MT (3:30pm ET, 2:30 CT, 12:30pm PT)

Register HERE

Eternal Victory: Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Vision of Empire
Bissera Pentcheva, Stanford University

Monday 8 November 2021
5:00 pm MST (7:00 pm ET, 6:00 pm CT, 4:00 PT)

Hagia Sophia enthralled its visitors with its luminous and immense interior and reverberant acoustics. The chants composed for this space further amplified the metaphysical effect of wet sound. By using both intercalations of non-semantic vocables and long melismas, these liturgical songs stretched the semantic chains, obfuscating the meaning and pushing sound beyond the register of human language. The divine in Hagia Sophia emerged in the aural and visual––reverberation, glitter, shadow— freed from anthropomorphic form. But this system was challenged after Iconoclasm (843 CE) when monumental figural decoration was introduced in the Great Church (867 CE) and the palatine chapels. This paper explores the change through the concept Eternal Victory. 
 
Starting in the ninth century but gaining momentum the late tenth century Byzantium reclaimed its territories in the East: capturing Crete, Antioch, and northern Palestine. These victories were celebrated with triumphal processions in Constantinople. New chants were written specifically to be performed in the Great Church and the palatine chapels. Some of the poetry and music was composed by the emperor himself. Analyzing the melodic contour of some of these songs shows how they strategically used the acoustics of the dome to offer a glittering vision of power. And the same time, the figural mosaics in Hagia Sophia and in the palatine chapels gave an anthropomorphic concreteness to the experience of the divine in the reverberant sound. None of these images survives. Yet, a monastery near Thebes (Greece), Hosios Loukas, preserves one of the most extensive Byzantine programs. It channels the Constantinopolitan liturgy and enables us to explore how reverberant sound and figural images operated together to shape a vision of the resurgent empire. 


This lecture is funded by the International Center of Medieval Art as the Stahl Lecture 2021. It is hosted by the University of Arizona School of Architecture and co-sponsored by the UA Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Mechanics, Department of History, Fred Fox School of Music, School of Art, and the UA Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Committee.
 
This lecture will be delivered on Zoom.  Advance registration is required HERE.
 

Image, Chant, and Imagination at Ste. Foy in Conques 
Bissera Pentcheva, Stanford University

Friday 12 November 2021
1:30pm MT (3:30pm ET, 2:30 CT, 12:30pm PT)
 
Medieval images decorating the interior and exterior of the ecclesiastical spaces were experienced in a sustained aural atmosphere of chanted prayer, recitation, and song. It is this sonic envelope and more specifically the melodic form and content of what is being sung that is rarely explored together with the visual, despite the fact that the music shaped how the figural was perceived. This talk engages the late-tenth, early eleventh-century music for the Office of Ste. Foy and places it in relation with the cult statue and the relief images in the church at Conques. How does the melody shape the meaning of the words; how does chant transform the perception of the architectural space and its images; how does music invite the imagination to conjure up the presence of the saint? Answering these questions will gradually uncover the multisensorial immersive atmosphere, created by the medieval liturgy, which led to a transcendence of subject and object into a mystical union.

This lecture is funded by the International Center of Medieval Art as the second Stahl Lecture 2021. It is hosted by the Arizona State University School of Art and co-sponsored by the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Design School, and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
 
This lecture will be delivered on Zoom.  Advance registration is required HERE.
 

About the speaker

Bissera Pentcheva, the ICMA Stahl Lecturer for 2021, is Professor of Art and Art History at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Classics. Author of three books (Icons and Power, The Sensual Icon, and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium) and editor of two more (Aural Architecture in Byzantium and Icons of Sound), she has redefined the study of Byzantine architecture by means of new insights at the intersection of architecture, art, acoustics, liturgy, and theology. Her particular interest has been the “animation” of objects and buildings over time as they are perceived in changing conditions of light and sound. To understand these phenomena in the past she has adopted contemporary technology to capture atmospheric effects around objects and in buildings and to match sonic performance today with the “acoustic signatures” of historic buildings.

Collecting the Medieval Past: What, Why, How? 28 October 2021 at 1pm ET - register today!

Collecting the Medieval Past: What, Why, How?
An online event presented by Friends of the ICMA

October 28, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. ET
Register HERE

The Limbourg Brothers, TRÈS RICHES HEURES du DUC de BERRY, January page from the Calendar, detail: the duke receives New Year's gifts. Chateau de Chantilly, Musée Condé; ms. 65, fol.1, c. 1412-1416.

The Limbourg Brothers, TRÈS RICHES HEURES du DUC de BERRY, January page from the Calendar, detail: the duke receives New Year's gifts. Chateau de Chantilly, Musée Condé; ms. 65, fol.1, c. 1412-1416.

Please join the Friends of the ICMA for the third in a series of special online events on Thursday, October 28 at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT; 6:00 p.m. BST; and 7:00 p.m. CET) with panelists who are prominent collectors and engaged with the art market:

  • Sandra Hindman, President and Founder of Les Enluminures

  • Marguerite Hoffman, former Chair of the Dallas Museum of Art, and member of the Visiting Committee to the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum

  • Robert (Bob) McCarthy, whose collection has been loaned to the Getty Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Belvedere in Vienna, and the Hong Kong University Museum and Gallery

  • Sir Paul Ruddock, former Chair of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Museum


The panel will be introduced and moderated by Helen C. Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Please feel free to notify colleagues and friends who may not be ICMA members about this event.

Register HERE.

For questions, please contact Doralynn Pines, Chair of the Friends of the ICMA, doralynn.pines@gmail.com.

2021 Forsyth Lecture: Representing Medieval Spain at The Met Cloisters, Thursday 14 October 2021 2-3pm ET; Register today!

2021 ICMA FORSYTH LECTURE

REPRESENTING MEDIEVAL SPAIN AT THE MET CLOISTERS
JULIA PERRATORE, ASSISTANT CURATOR, THE MET CLOISTERS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2021 
1-2 PM CT / 2-3 PM ET
 
REGISTER HERE

SpainCloisters.jpg

Communities of Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side in Spain for centuries, creating vibrant artistic traditions that often intersected. At The Met Cloisters, however, interactions between faiths in the medieval Iberian Peninsula have not always been visible. In the Forsyth lecture, Julia Perratore, Assistant Curator of Medieval Art, The Met Cloisters, will discuss the process of planning and implementing Spain, 1000-1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith, an exhibition which addresses this aspect of the museum’s permanent display.

For the first time since its inauguration at The Cloisters in 1961, the Fuentidueña Chapel gallery, which typically focuses on the Christian tradition, will present a group of works that testify to the diversity of Spanish medieval art. By telling a more nuanced story in this space, the exhibition demonstrates the ease with which objects and artistic ideas transcended differences of belief. Placed in dialogue with each other, the silk textiles, ivory carvings, illuminated manuscripts, frescoes, and monumental sculptures featured in the show reveal a dynamic, interconnected past that often mirrors the present. The exhibit opened on August 30, 2021, and will continue through January 30, 2022.

The webinar is made possible by the International Center of Medieval Art’s Forsyth Lecture fund with additional support from the UA Department of Art and Art History Visiting Artists and Scholar lecture fund.

Local Organizer: Jennifer M. Feltman, The University of Alabama, Department of Art and History, in collaboration with Erika Loic, Florida State University, Department of Art History

Hosted by The University of Alabama

For more info, see https://art.ua.edu/news/cloisters-curator-to-speak-on-medieval-spain/

CFP, ICMA at AAH 2022: Rethinking Royal Manuscripts in a Global Middle Ages; due 1 November 2021

ICMA at the Association for Art History’s 48th Annual Conference
6 – 8 April 2022, London
in person

due 1 November 2021
 
Rethinking Royal Manuscripts in a Global Middle Ages

Organized by Jacopo Gnisci (UCL) and Umberto Bongianino (University of Oxford)

Badr al-Dīn Luʾlu enthroned, from a manuscript of the Kitāb al-Aghānī (Mosul, 1220 CE). Source: Wikimedia.

Badr al-Dīn Luʾlu enthroned, from a manuscript of the Kitāb al-Aghānī (Mosul, 1220 CE). Source: Wikimedia.

This panel sets out to examine and compare the impact of royal patronage on the visual, material, and textual features of manuscripts produced across Africa, Asia, Mesoamerica and Europe during the ‘Global Middle Ages.’ As polysemic and multi-technological objects, royal manuscripts were produced in different forms and sizes, and from a variety of materials that could vary according to the taste, wealth, ideology, religion, and connections of their patrons and makers. Their visual and textual content could conform or deviate from existing traditions to satisfy the needs and ambitions of those involved in their production and consumption. Finally, pre-existing manuscripts could be appropriated, restored, enhanced, gifted, and even worshipped by ruling elites for reasons connected with legitimacy and self-preservation, becoming powerful instruments of hegemony, or symbols of prestige and piety. Because of this semiotic versatility, written artifacts provide ideal vantage points for understanding the agency of material culture in the creation and perpetuation of political power.  To what extent do the materials, texts, and images of royal manuscripts reflect the integration of pre-modern courts in networks of patronage and exchange? In which ways were these features adapted for different audiences and for female, male, or genderqueer patrons? How did they inform local and transregional notions of power and authority? How did communities that opposed royal authority situate themselves in relation to the political agency of written texts and their illustrations? When and how did such artifacts become imperial relics to be displayed, or symbols of a contentious past to be concealed or destroyed? What can manuscripts tell us about the royal patronage of other artistic media, dynastic rivalries, political alliances, and state-endorsed religious phenomena?

In pursuing similar questions, we are particularly interested in multidisciplinary papers that move beyond a Eurocentric reading of material culture by considering royal manuscripts from pre-modern polities traditionally seen as ‘peripheral.’ We welcome proposals that seek to apply innovative methodologies to the study of handwritten material and its circulation, questioning conventional assumptions about politics, culture, and religion, and privileging comparative approaches and transcultural artistic phenomena.
 
Call for Papers deadline: 1 November 2021. Please submit your paper proposal to the convenors:

Umberto Bongianino: umberto.bongianino@orinst.ox.ac.uk
Jacopo Gnisci: j.gnisci@ucl.ac.uk 

Presenters in ICMA-sponsored sessions will be eligible for conference fee reimbursement (if virtual) OR travel reimbursement (if in person) via the ICMA-Kress Travel Grant (https://www.medievalart.org/kress-travel-grant).

CFP: CROSSING BORDERS AND MORE, ICMA STUDENT COMMITTEE AT IMC LEEDS 2022, DUE 26 SEPTEMBER 2021

Call for Papers for ICMA Student Committee Session
International Medieval Congress (IMC 2022) 4-7 July 2022, University of Leeds
due 26 September 2021

Abraham Cresque, Catalan Atlas, Marco Polo on his way across Asia (1375, Southern Spain), Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, plate 5

Abraham Cresque, Catalan Atlas, Marco Polo on his way across Asia (1375, Southern Spain), Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, plate 5

Crossing Borders and More

Borders in the medieval world could encompass a range of  delimitations. Geographical borders on maps proclaim demarcations between states or continents, while social borders distinguish different communities of people often through dress or customs. Ideological borders, such as those between religious belief and taboos, instruct individuals to recognize what is morally accepted by divine and clerical authorities and what is not. 

Crossing borders in the Middle Ages was not only a potentially physical experience, as one’s bodily displacement from one region to the other, but also possibly a transformative one on internal and communal levels. Pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela (Spain) or Sanchi (India) or the Mogao Grottoes (China), processions held for important religious feast days including those of the Virgin Mary and saints or the retinues of shahs and emperors, as well as the voyages of Marco Polo, Zheng He, Crusaders, merchants, and many others were eminent instances of border-crossing events. These movements were not only recorded in the written record of the time but are also testified by the material objects and monumental structures that were brought, exchanged, and constructed to mark these occurrences. The Sogdian tombs in China provide one prime example of a space whose contents reveal transcultural identities, through the presence of Zoroastrian icons and images. Similarly, the sumptuous Gothic rood screens in Naumburg Cathedral and the inscriptions around the Dome of the Rock remind medieval peoples what the experience of crossing the border could be—from this world into a realm of God. Gates and portals invite pious devotees to cross and enter but also keep out the uninitiated. We aim to organize a session around the visual or material culture produced for or involved in the particular experience of crossing thresholds around the medieval world. How did images, objects, and monumental structures contribute to the experience of crossing the border? How did this particular movement speak to broader concepts of faith, identity, and morality? What do objects exchanged from different geographical zones in history reveal about pre-modern globalization?

 

We invite papers on a range of topics, which may include but are not limited to:

-        The visual design of different thresholds with spiritual implications of passage;

-        Façades and their portals and doorways, or gateways and other liminal sites intended as transition or initiation spaces;

-        Sacred spaces and their representations

 

Please submit a 250-word proposal for a 15–20-minute paper. Proposals should have an abstract format and be accompanied by a one-page CV, including e-mail and current affiliation. Please notice that this session is primarily intended for graduate students and first-time presenter. Please submit all relevant documents, as PDF or Word.doc, by 26 September 2021, to the following:

Francesco Capitummino, University of Cambridge; fc484@cam.ac.uk
Nieve Cassidy, University College of London; nieveanne@outlook.com
Ziqiao Wang, Courtauld Institute of Art; C2027496@courtauld.ac.uk