ICMA at CAA 2024 + ICMA Annual Meeting and Cocktail Hour - Register now!

If you are attending the College Art Association Annual Conference in Chicago this week, we hope to see you at the ICMA Annual Meeting (online) with an in-person cocktail hour to follow on Friday 16 February 2024. Please register for the Annual Meeting Zoom link and instructions to the cocktail hour venue.

The ICMA Sponsored Session takes place on Saturday 17 February 2024. Note the new location: Hilton Chicago - 8th Floor - Lake Michigan.

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ICMA Annual Meeting and Cocktail Hour
Online and in-person
In conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference 2024
Chicago, Illinois

Friday 16 February 2024
2:30pm CT, online Annual Meeting 
6:30pm CT, in-person cocktail hour 
Register HERE


ICMA at CAA Annual Conference 2024
ICMA Sponsored Session
Medieval Ritual Representations: Model of or Model for?
10am, Saturday 17 February 2024

ICMA Annual Meeting and Cocktail Hour
Online and in-person
In conjunction with the CAA Annual Conference 2024
Chicago, Illinois

Friday 16 February 2024 
2:30pm CT, online Annual Meeting 
6:30pm CT, in-person cocktail hour

Register HERE 

Join us for our Annual Meeting, taking place online via Zoom from 2:30-3:00pm CT on Friday 16 February 2024. ICMA President Steve Perkinson will review ICMA's activities during the past year along with announcing the results of the ICMA election. We will recognize the important contributions of outgoing board members and committee chairs. The online Annual Meeting will last about 20 minutes. 

For those able to be in Chicago in-person, a cocktail hour will take place near the Hilton Chicago at 6:30pm CT until 8pm CT, again on Friday 16 February 2024. Venue detail and further instructions to follow.

We would be grateful for your prompt RSVPs, as this will help us finalize plans for the cocktail hour.

Register HERE for both events. 

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ICMA at CAA Annual Conference 2024
ICMA-Sponsored Session
Medieval Ritual Representations: Model of or Model for?

10am, Saturday 17 February 2024
Hilton Chicago - 8th Floor - Lake Michigan (NOTE NEW LOCATION)

Organized by Robert S. Nelson and Alice Isabella Sullivan

PRESENTATIONS
Salvation on the Move: Relics and Epidemics in an Ottonian Manuscript,  Jesus Rodriguez Viejo, University of Groningen

Representations of Performance in the Konstanz Holy Sepulcher, Matthew Sova, Johns Hopkins University

Ritual Practice as Community Building in the Birds Head Haggadah, Mark Harrison Summers

An Illustrated Armenian Law Book and the Ceremonial Staging of the King’s Body, Gohar Grigoryan, University of Fribourg

Click HERE for the conference link.

ICMA Study Event for Africa & Byzantium, Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality, and Ethiopia at the Crossroads (23-25 February 2024) - REGISTER NOW! SPACE IS LIMITED!

ICMA Study Event for Africa & Byzantium, Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality, and Ethiopia at the Crossroads

Friday 23 February 2024 - Sunday 25 February 2024
New York City and Baltimore
Register HERE

ICMA members are invited to a three-part study event for the exhibitions Africa & Byzantium, Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality, and Ethiopia at the Crossroads with exhibition curators at each museum. Attendees are responsible for booking their own travel and accommodations.


Friday 23 February, 1pm-5:30pm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Africa & Byzantium

Africa and Byzantium: Past, Present, and Future
Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education

What is African art? What is Byzantine art? The exhibition Africa & Byzantium presents the opportunity to examine these key questions. Join scholars as they share their perspectives on how definitions of African and Byzantine art overlap and diverge, how terms and perceptions have shifted over the past generation, and how we might develop frameworks that embrace complexity rather than assume a binary moving forward.  For full schedule, more information, and to register, click HERE. All attendees must register via The Met’s website.

From 10:30am-12:15pm before the program, explore Egypt’s Red Monastery using a mixed reality experience developed by Interactive Commons at Case Western Reserve University. Register HERE

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is open until 9pm to view the exhibition.
For exhibition information, click HERE



Saturday 24 February 2024, 10:30am
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York
Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality

On-site curator Deidre Jackson will introduce the exhibition to ICMA members and give insights on the development and design of the exhibition. Deidre will be present in the galleries for questions as attendees view the exhibition at their own pace.

Space is limited to 20 attendees.
For exhibition information, click HERE



Sunday 25 February 2024, 12pm
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Ethiopia at the Crossroads

Recipient of the inaugural ICMA-Kress Exhibition Grant, join exhibition curator Christine Sciacca for a special ICMA member look at the groundbreaking exhibition Ethiopia at the Crossroads.

Space is limited to 20 attendees.
For exhibition information, click HERE

Note: Attendees are responsible for travel to Baltimore from NYC. Baltimore is about a 3 hour train ride via Amtrak from NYC’s Moynihan Train Hall (Penn Station). Book with haste to ensure cheap train fare. For those staying in a hotel in Baltimore, Hotel Indigo and Hotel Revival are the closest hotels to the museum. You can expect to be finished at The Walters Art Museum by 2:30pm.


For any questions, please email icma@medievalart.org with the subject line “NY/Baltimore weekend”

Register HERE for all weekend events. Note that you must register separately for The Met events on Friday 23 February 2024 (listed above).

NEW VIDEO! FRIENDS OF THE ICMA PRESENTS MEDIEVAL COMING ATTRACTIONS 2023-2024, 11 DECEMBER 2023

NEW VIDEO

FRIENDS OF THE ICMA PRESENTS MEDIEVAL COMING ATTRACTIONS 2023-2024

11 DECEMBER 2023 11 AM ET

The Friends of the ICMA held the latest in a series of special online events on Thursday 21 December 2023 at 11:00am ET (17:00 CET). The hour-long program previeweed three medieval exhibitions, each introduced by its curator.

Diane Wolfthal spoke about her exhibition Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality. The exhibition is on view at the The Morgan Library & Museum through 10 March 2024. 
https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/medieval-money

Peter Carpreau introduced his exhibition, Dieric Bouts: Creator of Images. The exhibition was on view at M Leuven through 14 January 2024. 
https://www.mleuven.be/en/programme/dieric-bouts

Andrea Myers Achi spoke about her exhibition Africa & Byzantium. The exhibition is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until 3 March 2024.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/africa-byzantium

The panel was introduced and moderated by Leslie Bussis Tait, Chair of the Friends of the ICMA.

To watch the video, visit the Special Online Lectures page.

ICMA in London (7 Feb) and Edinburgh (12 Feb): tannczen, helsen, kussen, vnd rawmen: Of Dancing and Dalliance in the Late Middle Ages; Nina Rowe, lecturer

The ICMA at the Courtauld Lecture is presented in London on Wednesday 7 February 2024. Register HERE. In-person only.

ICMA in Edinburgh Lecture is presented on Monday 12 February 2024. Register HERE. In-person and virtual options to attend.

SEE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION.

Nikolaus Türing, Relief with Morris Dancers, detail of the Goldenes Dachl, Innsbruck, ca. 1496-1500. (Photo: Stadtarchiv Innsbruck / Museum Goldenes Dachl)

ICMA IN LONDON
ICMA at the Courtauld Lecture

tannczen, helsen, kussen, vnd rawmen: Of Dancing and Dalliance in the Late Middle Ages

Nina Rowe, lecturer

The Courtauld, Vernon Square Campus
17:30 GMT, Wednesday 7 February 2024
Register HERE
In-person only

In the German realm in the late Middle Ages, dancing was cause for both celebration and concern. Poets crafted animated accounts of boisterous roundelays welcoming winter and summer, municipal leaders designated festival days when citizens were permitted to whirl and shuffle in city squares, and churchmen admonished Christian youths to beware the seductions of frivolous young ladies on the dance floor. In short, literary and administrative texts evoke the appeal and hazards of dance, both as pastime and performance, in the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire, circa 1450 to 1500. Scholars of medieval art, however, have seldom probed the array of images showing couples spinning, performers leaping, and folks on the sidelines being enticed into the joyful fray. This lecture examines illuminations, wall paintings, prints, and sculptures that capture a variety of attitudes toward dancing in the regions of Bavaria and Austria in the second half of the fifteenth century. Clerics may have condemned dancing as a tool of the devil that irresistibly leads to unchastity and thereby damnation, but artistic evidence indicates that laypeople were willing to take their chances. In public images and small-scale works targeted to wealthy urban audiences, viewers could learn about the risks of dance, but also find encouragement to step out and join the party.

Nina Rowe is a Professor of Medieval Art History at Fordham University in New York City. Her books include The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2011) and The Illuminated World Chronicle: Tales from the Late Medieval City (Yale UP, 2020), as well as edited volumes, most recently: Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past (Fordham UP, 2019). She has held fellowships from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and she served as President of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA), 2020-2023.

Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld) and Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld). 

Series made possible through the generosity of William M. Voelkle.

Register HERE

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ICMA in Edinburgh

Dancing and Dalliance in the Late Middle Ages: tannczen, helsen, kussen, vnd rawmen

Nina Rowe, lecturer

Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh
Hunter Lecture Theatre
17:15 - 19:30 GMT, Monday 12 February 2024
Register HERE

Professor Nina Rowe will repeat her ICMA at The Courtauld Lecture (listed above) for an Edinburgh audience, with both in-person and virtual options to attend. Please register to indicate your attendance.

For those attending in person, the lecture will take place in the Hunter Lecture Theatre (0.17) of the Hunter Building, 74 Lauriston Place Edinburgh, EH3 9DF. A wine reception will follow in the John Higgitt Gallery, also in the Hunter Building.

Organised by Dr. Heather Pulliam (The University of Edinburgh).

Register HERE

Brigitte Buettner's "The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture" awarded 2023 ICMA Annual Book Prize

ICMA Annual Book Prize

We are delighted to announce the recipient of the 2023 ICMA Annual Book Prize:

Brigitte Buettner
The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture

The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022.
Click here for the Penn State University Press site

Brigitte Buettner’s The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture is a landmark study, deeply learned and intellectually adventurous. Physically, it is also an exquisitely beautiful book that brings to light a variety of objects that do not usually get the kind of careful, highly critical analysis they find here. In Buettner’s deft hands, crowns, illuminated lapidaries, stones carved with figures, and geographic manuscripts (among other things) demonstrate the depth of the medieval fascination with the mineral, tying it to the once-living bodies that wore, handled, and viewed these objects. Buettner skillfully weaves together contemporary theory with medieval epistemologies and plays out a coherent argument about the significance of precious stones that situates them within a larger, very timely, reexamination of relationships between the intellectual and material cultures of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern, and between the Latin Christian sphere of western Europe and the wider worlds of Byzantium, Islamic north Africa and western Asia, Persia, India, and China. While reveling in the visual and material delights of the Gothic mineral arts, the book does not ignore the more sinister aspect of this history, namely its seminal role in the growth of extractive colonialism, especially after 1492. This broad and nuanced view of the later European Middle Ages in a global context will make The Mineral and the Visual a profoundly influential book for future medievalist scholarship. Furthermore, it is written in elegant, lively prose that moves the complex argument along in a lucid fashion. In the words of Alexander Neckam, chosen by Buettner herself to conclude this innovative monograph, it is “a delight, a study, and a treasure.”


We thank the ICMA Book Prize Jury:
Alexa Sand (chair), Benjamin Anderson, Heather Badamo, Till-Holger Borchert, and Eric Ramirez-Weaver

THE MEDIEVAL MULTIPLE: SATURDAY 27 JANUARY 2024, an ICMA co-sponsored conference. REGISTER TODAY!

The Medieval Multiple

ICMA Co-Sponsored Conference
Hosted by the Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University

In person and livestream
Saturday 27 January 2024

Register HERE

Organized by Sonja Drimmer and Ryan Eisenman.

Recent efforts to conceptualize the "pre-modern multiple" only occasionally reckon with the Middle Ages. Medieval multiples are frequently positioned against their modern counterparts—especially print—and subsequently presented as isolated, unrealized forms of mass (re)production. Yet the multiple was not an anomaly but rather the product of a common mode of artistic creation in the Middle Ages, found in a wide variety of materials and object types. Recognizing its ubiquity in visual and material culture, this conference brings together scholars to consider the multiple in the interconnected cultures of Afro-Eurasia between ca. 500 and 1500: its ontological status, the ways in which it could be produced, and how its makers and viewers recognized (or failed to recognize) replication.

Register HERE

ICMA IN PARIS: In-person tour of THE TREASURY OF NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL, Tuesday 16 January 2024, Musée du Louvre

ICMA in Paris
Off-hours exhibition tour of 
The Treasury of Notre-Dame Cathedral: From Its Origins to Viollet-le-Duc

In-person, Musée du Louvre
Co-sponsored by the International Medieval Society, Paris
10:00am
Tuesday 16 January 2024

Register HERE

Join ICMA and IMS members for a private, off-hours tour of the exhibition The Treasury of Notre-Dame Cathedral: From Its Origins to Viollet-le-Duc with exhibition curators Florian Meunier and Jannic Durand. This is a special access tour and the museum will be closed to the public, so attendees can expect a tranquil viewing experience. The tour will be in English.

Click HERE for exhibition information.

Space is limited to 15 attendees. Attendees must be an ICMA or IMS member. Members receive priority; guests may be accommodated if space permits, but cannot be guaranteed.

For security purposes, the registration form closes on Tuesday 9 January 2024 at 10am ET. We anticipate a waitlist, so please notify the ICMA should your plans change (icma@medievalart.org)

Register HERE

Call for Proposals: ICMA at College Art Association Annual Conference 2025, due 15 January 2024

ICMA at College Art Association Annual Conference   

New York, February 2025 
Call for ICMA Sponsored Session Proposals
due Monday 15 January 2024

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) seeks proposals for sessions to be held under the organization’s sponsorship in 2025 at the annual meeting of the College Art Association. Session organizers and speakers must be ICMA members.  
 
The actual conference dates have not yet been confirmed, but the ICMA would like to plan ahead and so the CFP comes earlier this cycle.   
 
Proposals must include the following in one single Doc or PDF with the organizer’s name in the title:   

1. Session abstract   

2. CV of the organizer(s)   

3. Session organizers may also include a list of potential speakers   

Please upload all session proposals as a single DOC or PDF by 15 January 2024 here.
 
For inquiries, contact the Chair of the ICMA Programs & Lectures Committee: Alice Isabella Sullivan, Tufts University, USA, alice.sullivan@tufts.edu.  

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A note about Kress Travel Grants 

 
Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions up to a maximum of $600 for domestic travel and of $1200 for overseas travel. If a conference meets in person, the Kress funds are allocated for travel and hotel only. If a presenter is attending a conference virtually, Kress funding will cover virtual conference registration fees.
 
Click HERE for more information. 

MEDIEVAL COMING ATTRACTIONS, 2023-24. Online event, Thursday 21 December 2023

MEDIEVAL COMING ATTRACTIONS, 2023-24
THURSDAY 21 DECEMBER 2023 at 11am (17:00 CET)
Register HERE

Please join the Friends of the ICMA for the latest in a series of special online events on Thursday 21 December 2023 at 11:00am ET (17:00 CET). The hour-long program will preview three medieval exhibitions, each introduced by its curator.

Diane Wolfthal will speak about her exhibition Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality. The exhibition is on view at the The Morgan Library & Museum through 10 March 2024. 
https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/medieval-money

Peter Carpreau will introduce his exhibition, Dieric Bouts: Creator of Images. The exhibition is on view at M Leuven through 14 January 2024. 
https://www.mleuven.be/en/programme/dieric-bouts

Andrea Myers Achi will speak about her exhibition Africa & Byzantium. The exhibition is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until 3 March 2024.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/africa-byzantium

The panel will be introduced and moderated by Leslie Bussis Tait, Chair of the Friends of the ICMA.

Please feel free to notify colleagues and friends who may not be ICMA members about this event. The event will be recorded and accessible via the ICMA website (www.medievalart.org

For questions, please contact icma@medievalart.org

NEW VIDEO! MEDIEVAL MATTERS: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR ACCESS AND DISCOVERABILITY, TORY SCHENDEL-VYVODA AND JUILEE DECKER, 20 OCTOBER 2023

NEW VIDEO

MEDIEVAL MATTERS: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR ACCESS AND DISCOVERABILITY

20 OCTOBER 2023 12:00PM ET

Featuring Tory Schendel-Vyvoda (Harlaxton College), Juilee Decker, Izzy Moyer, and Gabriella Smith (Rochester Institute of Technology)

Sponsored By ICMA, the Museum Studies Program at the Rochester Institute Of Technology, and the Chester F. Carlson Center For Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute Of Technology

In conjunction with the exhibition, Illuminating the Medieval and the Modern through Cultural Heritage Imaging: A Brief History of Innovation and Collaboration, at Rochester Institute of Technology, this event offers examples and use cases of low barrier-to-entry technology to facilitate access and discoverability for research, exhibition development, and visitor engagement. Join facilitator Tory Schendel-Vyvoda, Visiting Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Harlaxton College, and Juilee Decker, Professor of Museum Studies, as they discuss innovative practices developed at RIT, working in collaboration with humanities scholars and museum practitioners, that can foster new knowledge about cultural heritage collections, including medieval manuscripts. Particular attention will be drawn to the involvement of undergraduate students in the museum studies program at RIT who have been working on the development of a low-cost, multispectral imaging system. After a brief demo of the system, attendees will learn how they can access this technology for use on their own collections. In the second part of the session, attention will turn to the use of technology for digital access such as 3D capture to develop interactive, digital exhibitions using freely-available tools. Attention will turn, in the final third of the session, to the audience for a conversation and brainstorming about what digital methods ICMA members are using to advance access to collections and to provide opportunities for greater discoverability. These use cases will illuminate how digital technologies can enhance our understanding of cultural heritage collections and help make the case that medieval matters.

Juilee Decker, Ph.D. is professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology where she directs the Museum Studies/Public History program. She earned her Ph.D. from the joint program in art history and museum studies at Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Museum of Art. She serves as editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Collections (SAGE).

Tory Schendel-Vyvoda is a Visiting Professor of Art and History and Museum Studies at Harlaxton College as well as the curator of the Evansville African American Museum and director of the Lamasco Microgallery. She is pursuing her PhD at the Institute of Doctoral Studies in Visual Art.

Illuminating the Medieval and the Modern through Cultural Heritage Imaging: A Brief History of Innovation and Collaboration is the recipient of the 2022 ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant.

To watch the video, visit the Special Online Lectures page.

NEW VIDEOS! MINING THE COLLECTION I: THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM & MINING THE COLLECTION II: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO, ICMS 2023

NEW MINING THE COLLECTION VIDEOS

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES, 2023

THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM & THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

ONLINE, 11 AND 12 MAY 2023, 12:00-1:00 PM EDT

MINING THE COLLECTION I: THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM (A VIRTUAL VISIT)

Monday 11 May 2023 12:00pm EDT

A behind-the-scenes visit to the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore) with Christine Sciacca, Ellen Hoobler, Abigail Quant, and Lynley Herbert.

Sponsors: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA); Medieval Institute, Western Michigan Univ.

Organiser and Presider: Shirin Fozi, Metropolitan Museum of Art

MINING THE COLLECTION II: THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO (A VIRTUAL VISIT)

Monday 12 May 2023 12:00pm EDT

A behind-the-scenes visit to the Art Institute of Chicago with Jonathan Tavares.

Sponsors: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA); Medieval Institute, Western Michigan Univ.

Organiser and Presider: Shirin Fozi, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The video is available to watch on the Mining the Collection page.

Read ICMA News, Autumn 2023 online!

ICMA News               

AUTUMN 2023
Melanie Hanan, Editor

Click here to read.
Also available on www.medievalart.org

COMMEMORATION

Michael Kauffmann, 1931–2023
Otto Karl Werckmeister, 1934–2023
Barbara Lane, 1941–2023

SPECIAL FEATURES

Seeing Race Before Race through Community, By Christopher D. Fletcher

My Experience Translating A History of Illuminated Manuscripts into Chinese, By Xin Yue (Sylvia) Wang

EXHIBITION REPORTS

Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, by Cara Nordengren

Das Mittelalter—die Kunst des Jahrhunderts (The Middle Ages—the Art of the 15th Century), by Claire Kilgore

EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
 

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The deadline for the next issue of ICMA News is 15 February 2024. Please send information to newsletter@medievalart.org 

If you would like your upcoming conference, CFP, or exhibition included in the newsletter please email the information to EventsExhibitions@medievalart.org.

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CFP, ICMA-Sponsored Session at VII. Forum Kunst des Mittelalters 2024, Jena, Germany: “Shining with Truth”: Silver as Material and Medium, due 15 November 2023

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Shining with Truth”: Silver as Material and Medium
due 15 November 2023

VII. Forum Kunst des Mittelalters
25-28 September 2024
Jena, Germany
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität

Organized by
Joseph Ackley, Wesleyan University, United States
Joshua O’Driscoll, The Morgan Library & Museum, United States
           
Recent discussions of medieval materiality have enthusiastically explored such touchstones as gold and precious gems, sumptuous media par excellence whose dazzling brilliance triggered an endlessly rich array of meanings for medieval viewers. The preciousness and aesthetic impact of these materials rested in large part on their ability to manipulate and reflect light. The resulting radiance enabled a variety of perceptual modes, from the sensual to the mystical, the mechanics of which medieval thinkers repeatedly investigated with gusto. While gold and gemstones have been at the center of key art-historical inquiries (one thinks of recent work on gold-ground painting, jeweled reliquaries, and treasure bindings), silver has received significantly less attention as a focused object of study. Although a close peer to gold, silver exhibits different working properties, produces different visual effects, and carries different allegorical valences. The dominant traditions of natural philosophy often defined the two precious metals in contrast to each other: whereas gold was believed to be of a warm nature, for example, silver’s elemental composition caused it to be cool. Gold and some gemstones could strengthen the sense of sight, whereas silver had different bodily impacts. Much of the commentary on silver fixated on its variable levels of purity as, for example, in Psalm 11: “The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried by the fire … refined seven times.” Pursuing the analogy, Cassiodorus describes the luster of the Divine Word as if it were a metal “fired in a furnace, shining with the ruddy glow of truth.” Despite this rhetoric of purity, however, silver is quite famously susceptible to tarnish and oxidation, rendering it a more finicky material for book and panel painting.
 
In sum, the questions of visuality and materiality that have been so productive for gold and gemstones are equally rich for silver, and yet this material has been somewhat sidelined by scholarship, despite crucial contributions by Herbert Kessler, Thomas Raff, and Nancy Turner, among others. Mindful thereof, this panel invites submissions that explore the nature and significance of silver, particularly when used as a medium in manuscript illumination, panel painting, and metalwork. Questions of the visual characteristics of silver, including its interaction with light, can expand in a variety of directions. Topics might include, and are very much not limited to, traditions of silver-ground painting; the oxidation of silver; the rhetoric of tarnish and darkness; the natural philosophy of silver, especially with regards to optics, sight and the body; the allegorical interpretations of silver, for example, its relationship to sweetness, purity, and eloquence; Zwischgold, electrum, and other interactions with gold; the various treatments of silver pigment and silver leaf on both parchment and panel; and more.
 
Paper proposals of no more than 200 words may be emailed to kontakt@dvfk-berlin.de by 15 November 2023.  For more on the Forum please visit the conference website here. 

Funding for travel and lodging will be made available from the ICMA through the generosity of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Questions may be directed to the panel organizers at jackley@wesleyan.edu and jodriscoll@themorgan.org. 

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In den jüngsten Diskussionen über mittelalterliche Materialität wurden mit Begeisterung Prüfsteine wie Gold und kostbare Edelsteine erforscht, prächtige Medien par excellence, deren schillernder Glanz bei den mittelalterlichen Betrachtern eine unendlich reiche Palette von Bedeutungsinterpretationen auslöste. Die Kostbarkeit und ästhetische Wirkung dieser Materialien beruhten zu einem großen Teil auf ihrer Eigenschaft, Licht zu manipulieren und zu reflektieren. Der daraus resultierende Glanz ermöglichte eine Vielzahl von Wahrnehmungsweisen, vom Sinnlichen bis hin zum Mystischen, deren Mechanismen mittelalterliche Denker immer wieder mit Begeisterung erforschten. Während Gold und Edelsteine im Mittelpunkt wichtiger kunsthistorischer Untersuchungen standen (man denke nur an die jüngsten Arbeiten über Goldgrundmalerei, juwelenbesetzte Reliquienschreine und Schatzeinbände), wurde Silber als Untersuchungsgegenstand deutlich weniger beachtet. Obwohl es dem Gold sehr ähnlich ist, weist Silber andere Verarbeitungseigenschaften auf, erzeugt andere visuelle Effekte und hat andere allegorische Bedeutungen. Die vorherrschenden Traditionen der Naturphilosophie definierten die beiden Edelmetalle oft im Gegensatz zueinander: Während Gold beispielsweise als warmes Element galt, war Silber aufgrund seiner elementaren Zusammensetzung kühl. Gold und einige Edelsteine konnten den Sehsinn stärken, während Silber andere körperliche Wirkungen hatte. Ein Großteil der Kommentare zu Silber konzentrierte sich auf den unterschiedlichen Reinheitsgrad, wie zum Beispiel in Psalm 11: „Die Worte des Herrn sind reine Worte, wie Silber, das vom Feuer geprüft … siebenmal geläutert wird“. In Fortsetzung dieser Analogie beschreibt Cassiodor den Glanz des göttlichen Wortes als ein Metall, das “in einem Ofen gebrannt wird und mit dem rötlichen Schein der Wahrheit glänzt”. Trotz dieser Rhetorik der Reinheit ist Silber jedoch bekanntermaßen anfällig für Anlaufen und Oxidation, was es zu einem heikleren Material für Buch- und Tafelmalerei macht. Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass die Fragen der Visualität und Materialität, die für Gold und Edelsteine so ergiebig waren, auch für Silber gelten, und dennoch wurde dieses Material von der Wissenschaft etwas vernachlässigt, trotz wichtiger Beiträge von Herbert Kessler, Thomas Raff, Nancy Turner und anderen. Aus diesem Grund bittet dieses Gremium um Einreichungen, die sich mit dem Wesen und der Bedeutung von Silber befassen, insbesondere wenn es als Medium in der Manuskriptillumination, der Tafelmalerei und der Metallbearbeitung verwendet wird. Fragen zu den visuellen Eigenschaften von Silber, einschließlich seiner Interaktion mit Licht, können sich in eine Vielzahl von Richtungen ausweiten. Zu den Themen gehören u. a. die Traditionen der Silbergrundmalerei, die Oxidation von Silber, die Rhetorik von Anlauffarben und Dunkelheit, die Naturphilosophie des Silbers, insbesondere im Hinblick auf Optik, Sehkraft und Körper, die allegorischen Interpretationen des Silbers, z. B. seine Beziehung zu Süße, Reinheit und Beredsamkeit, Zwischgold, Elektrum und andere Wechselwirkungen mit Gold, die verschiedenen Behandlungen von Silberpigment und Blattsilber auf Pergament und Tafel und vieles mehr.

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A note about Kress Travel Grants 

Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions up to a maximum of $600 for domestic travel and of $1200 for overseas travel. If a conference meets in person, the Kress funds are allocated for travel and hotel only. If a presenter is attending a conference virtually, Kress funding will cover virtual conference registration fees.
 
Click HERE for more information. 

CFP, ICMA-Sponsored Session at AAH 2024, Bristol UK: The Past, Present and Future of Medieval Art in the British Isles, due 10 November 2023

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Past, Present and Future of Medieval Art in the British Isles
due 10 November 2023

Association for Art History Annual Conference
3-5 April 2024
Bristol, United Kingdom
University of Bristol

Organized by
Matthew M. Reeve, Queen’s University, Canada, matthew.reeve@queensu.ca
Amanda Luyster, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, United States, aluyster@holycross.edu

Where are we with writing the history of British medieval art? The arts of medieval Britain once had a peripheral place in broader histories of medieval art where they were frequently understood as passive receptors of Continental influence. Much scholarship has challenged this view and reframed British art as a vital component of European and even global Medieval art. But “British art” was never monolithic: it was created by diverse linguistic, religious, and artistic cultures (Welsh, Norman, etc). These diverse cultures and their art production were shaped and reshaped by colonial encounter from the mission of Augustine and the Viking incursions through the Norman and Edwardian conquests, and yet they retained their cultural, linguistic and artistic complexity. “British art” was also inherently international: the importation of relics and ars sacra during the crusades, the export of luxury goods such as opus anglicanum and alabaster, and the odysseys of artists from Rome to Westminster or architects from Bristol to Prague, meant that British art was framed by global networks of exchange. Recent discoveries such as the Staffordshire Hoard, the Macclesfield Psalter, and the wall paintings of St Cadoc’s, Llancarfan, and the publication of significant studies of Anglo-Saxon through Gothic art in Britain have profoundly changed the scholarly landscape and demand that we reassess some of our key ideas and approaches. This session will present research that explores British art from a range of perspectives (including historiographical), although each will reflect critically on the place of British art within medievalist art history in general.

Sessions sponsored by the ICMA with support from the Kress Foundation.

To offer a paper: Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s). You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme. 

For more information about the conference, click HERE.

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A note about Kress Travel Grants 

 
Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions up to a maximum of $600 for domestic travel and of $1200 for overseas travel. If a conference meets in person, the Kress funds are allocated for travel and hotel only. If a presenter is attending a conference virtually, Kress funding will cover virtual conference registration fees.
 
Click HERE for more information. 

Medieval Matters: Digital Technologies for Access and Discoverability - Friday 20 October 2023 at 12pm ET

Medieval Matters: Digital Technologies for Access and Discoverability

Friday 20 October 2023
12pm ET
Online via Zoom

Register HERE

In conjunction with the exhibition Illuminating the Medieval and the Modern through Cultural Heritage Imaging: A Brief History of Innovation and Collaboration at Rochester Institute of Technology, this event offers examples and use cases of low barrier-to-entry technology to facilitate access and discoverability for research, exhibition development, and visitor engagement. Join facilitator Tory Schendel-Vyvoda, Visiting Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Harlaxton College, and Juilee Decker, Professor of Museum Studies, as they discuss innovative practices developed at RIT, working in collaboration with humanities scholars and museum practitioners, that can foster new knowledge about cultural heritage collections, including medieval manuscripts.

Particular attention will be drawn to the involvement of undergraduate students in the museum studies program at RIT who have been working on the development of a low-cost, multispectral imaging system. After a brief demo of the system, attendees will learn how they can access this technology for use on their own collections. In the second part of the session, attention will turn to the use of technology for digital access such as 3D capture to develop interactive, digital exhibitions using freely-available tools. Attention will turn, in the final third of the session, to the audience for a conversation and brainstorming about what digital methods ICMA members are using to advance access to collections and to provide opportunities for greater discoverability. These use cases will illuminate how digital technologies can enhance our understanding of cultural heritage collections and help make the case that medieval matters.

Registration Required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/medieval-matters-digital-technologies-for-access-and-discoverability-tickets-717253924797

Juilee Decker, Ph.D. is professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology where she directs the Museum Studies/Public History program. She earned her Ph.D. from the joint program in art history and museum studies at Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Museum of Art. She serves as editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Collections (SAGE).

Tory Schendel-Vyvoda is a Visiting Professor of Art and History and Museum Studies at Harlaxton College as well as the curator of the Evansville African American Museum and director of the Lamasco Microgallery. She is pursuing her PhD at the Institute of Doctoral Studies in Visual Art.
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Sponsored by the ICMA, the Museum Studies Program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology 

More information about the exhibition, on view in Rochester, NY until 28 October 2023: https://www.rit.edu/universitygallery/exhibitions/current-exhibitions

Illuminating the Medieval and the Modern through Cultural Heritage Imaging: A Brief History of Innovation and Collaboration is the recipient of the 2022 ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant. 

NEW VIDEO! ICMA VIEWPOINTS BOOK LAUNCH, IS BYZANTINE STUDIES A COLONIALIST DISCIPLINE? TOWARD A CRITICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY, EDITED BY BENJAMIN ANDERSON AND MIRELA IVANOVA

NEW VIDEO

ICMA VIEWPOINTS BOOK LAUNCH

IS BYZANTINE STUDIES A COLONIALIST DISCIPLINE? TOWARD A CRITICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY, EDITED BY BENJAMIN ANDERSON AND MIRELA IVANOVA

ONLINE, 15 SEPTEMBER 2023, 12:00-1:00 PM ET

WITH BENJAMIN ANDERSON, MIRELA IVANOVA, ROLAND BETANCOURT, ELEANOR GOODMAN, NICHOLAS S. M. MATHEOU, ELIZABETH DOSPĚL WILLIAMS, AND ALEXANDRA VUKOVICH 

Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline? Rather than provide a definitive answer to this question, this book defines the parameters of the debate and proposes ways of thinking about what it would mean to engage seriously with the field’s political and intellectual genealogies, hierarchies, and forms of exclusion. In this volume, scholars of art, history, and literature address the entanglements, past and present, among the academic discipline of Byzantine Studies and the practice and legacies of European colonialism. Starting with the premise that Byzantium and the field of Byzantine studies are simultaneously colonial and colonized, the chapters address topics ranging from the material basis of philological scholarship and its uses in modern politics to the colonial plunder of art and its consequences for curatorial practice in the present. The book concludes with a bibliography that serves as a foundation for a coherent and systematic critical historiography. Bringing together insights from scholars working in different disciplines, regions, and institutions, Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? urges practitioners to reckon with the discipline’s colonialist, imperialist, and white supremacist history. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Andrea Myers Achi, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Bahattin Bayram, Averil Cameron, Stephanie R. Caruso, Şebnem Dönbekci, Hugh G. Jeffery, Anthony Kaldellis, Matthew Kinloch, Nicholas S. M. Matheou, Maria Mavroudi, Zeynep Olgun, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Jake Ransohoff, Alexandra Vukovich, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, and Arielle Winnik. ICMA Books | Viewpoints aims to engage with and instigate new conversations, debates, and perspectives not only about medieval art and visual-material culture, but also in relation to the critical practices employed by medieval art historians. Books will typically be data-rich, issue-driven, and even polemical. The range of potential subjects is broad and varied, and each title will tackle a significant and timely problem in the field of medieval art and visual-material culture. The Viewpoints series is interdisciplinary and actively involved in providing a forum for current critical developments in art historical methodology, the structure of scholarly writing, and/or the use of evidence. Eleanor Goodman is the Executive Editor at Penn State University Press, and Roland Betancourt is the Series Editor.

The video is available to watch on the Special Online Lectures page.

ICMA in Toronto! Exhibition tour of “Rumi: A Visual Journey Through the Life and Legacy of a Sufi Mystic” at the Aga Khan Museum - Tuesday 26 September 2023 at 3pm ET

JUST ANNOUNCED!

ICMA in Toronto
Tour of Rumi: A Visual Journey Through the Life and Legacy of a Sufi Mystic

Aga Khan Museum
Tuesday 26 September 2023
3pm ET, in person only

Register HERE

Join fellow ICMA members for a special tour of Rumi: A Visual Journey Through the Life and Legacy of a Sufi Mystic with exhibition curator Michael Chagnon.

Journey through the life and timeless legacy of Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (d. 1273), known as Rumi, in an inspiring exhibition celebrating one of history's most famous poets, on the 750th anniversary of his passing. Join us as we explore Rumi's enduring impact through an examination of artifacts, manuscripts, and contemporary art.

More information about the exhibition HERE.
 

Drinks to follow offsite. 

Register HERE.

CALL FOR PAPERS: ICMA at the International Congress on Medieval Studies 2024; due 15 September 2023

CALL FOR PAPERS

ICMA Sponsored Sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies 2024

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The Sense of an Ending: Finispieces in Medieval Codices
due 15 September 2023

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2024
International Center of Medieval Art Sponsored Session

Organizer:
Julie A. Harris, marfiles@comcast.net 

Format: in person

While much has been written about the opening folios of medieval illuminated codices - especially about the entity known as the carpet page - the final pages of these books have been little studied. Papers in this session are asked to address the following questons: what sort of materials does one expect to find at the end of a precious codex? Can the visual designs of these final folios be seen as expressing notions of protection, closure, continuity, or identity? How do the designs we find at the end of a book reconcile ideation about its contents with the material requirements of the codex and the needs of its patrons/users? Is the decorative Finispiece a viable, meaningful, and expected entity in medieval book culture?

Proposals for this in-person panel must be submitted through the Confex proposal portal.

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Cross-Cultural Interaction in the Alps: Medieval Artistic Production in the Historic County of Tyrol 
due 15 September 2023

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2024
International Center of Medieval Art Sponsored Session

Organizers:
Emma Leidy (ecl2177@columbia.edu)
Sarah Cohen (sf2112@columbia.edu)

Format: in person
 
In field-defining studies published between 1950-2000, the historic County of Tyrol is recognized as a flourishing area of artistic production, particularly in wall painting around the year 1200. Furthermore, this resilient center located at the crossroads of north and south repeatedly evades stylistic classification. Described as neither Romanesque nor proto-Gothic, the renowned wall paintings of Malles and Naturno have been cast as an unusual mixture of post-Ottonian, Carolingian, and Veneto-Byzantine styles, ambiguously attributed to either local or itinerant artists. Similar speculation regarding questions of style and artistry surrounds the area’s sculpture from the later medieval period. Works related to the so-called “Beautiful Style” originating at the imperial court in Prague have received particular attention concerning their place of production and whether they were imported, sculpted by foreign artists, or created in Tyrol itself. Influential contributions to scholarship include the work of Enrico Castelnuovo, (1929-2014), including the co-authored and edited volumes Centre and Periphery (1979), La frontiera nella storia dell’arte (1987), and Il gotico nelle Alpi 1350-1450 (2002). Yet, in the past twenty years, few studies have attempted to readdress artistic production in this region. Even fewer have moved beyond matters of style to engage with its socio-political complexity, as the Brenner Pass connected the empires north of the harsh mountain range to those of the south, which, in turn, brought merchants, artists, and pilgrims to and from the eastern Mediterranean.   
 
This session seeks papers that address any of the following questions: How, in fact, do we move beyond style to discuss artistic production in Tyrol? Can we speak of workshops or define them as such? What can be gained from studying the movement of people and objects between Tyrol and its neighbors to the north and south? Similarly, how can politics and trade networks inform our understanding of this area?  
 
Possible themes and subjects include but are not limited to: 

• Wall painting, monumental art, sculpture, manuscript production, and religious architecture 

• Program themes and iconography 

• Imperial and royal patronage

• Monastic communities

• Trade networks 

• Historiography and nationalism

Proposals for this in-person panel must be submitted through the Confex proposal portal.

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Sites of Tension I: Islands and Isolation
Sites of Tension II: Islands and Interconnectivity 
due 15 September 2023

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2024
International Center of Medieval Art Sponsored Session

Organizers:
Gabriela Chitwood gchitwood@uoregon.edu
Brittany Forniotis bnf11@duke.edu
Nina Gonzalbez nmg03e@fsu.edu
Shannah Rose smr690@nyu.edu

Format: in person

In the premodern world, the Isolario (“Book of Islands”) was a popular genre for providing geographical, historical, and cultural descriptions of the islands of the oikumene. In Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario (Venice: Nicolò Zappino, 1528), for example, the Paduan cartographer famously describes all islands of the known world, detailing their folklore, myths, cultures, climates, and histories. Intended as an illustrated and practical guide for sailors, Bordone’s Isolario is replete with woodcut maps and explanatory texts that visualize and describe the major known islands and ports throughout the Mediterranean, the Americas, and the Indian Ocean. Several of the woodcut illustrations are among the earliest printed maps of the depicted sites—including the first separate printed map of Cuba—all of which are represented as isolated islands devoid of contact with other geographies, cultures, and histories. This two-part session questions the tenets laid out in such island books: how did medieval peoples navigate the tension between isolation and interconnectivity in island communities and geographies?

Sites of Tension I: Islands and Isolation (Session ID 5329), the first of this two-part session, explores the practical and cognitive effects of building and experiencing lives on islands in the medieval world. It considers the multifaceted ways in which such geographies affected the built environment and visual culture in the Middle Ages. Bearing in mind issues such as isolation and untranslatability, this session seeks papers that address how art and architecture on islands— conceived physically and literally—operated according to their unique, localized geographies and contributed to the formation of island identities.

Sites of Tension II: Islands and Interconnectivity (Session ID 5340), the second of this two-part session, looks beyond issues of physical, geographic isolation. This session examines the imagined or metaphorical island as a locus of inquiry in the medieval world. Bearing in mind the complex political, economic, and cultural significance of overseas exchange and maritime exploration in the formation of islands, this session seeks papers that explore the vital roles played by cross-cultural exchange and colonization in the formation of islands—conceived conceptually.

The ICMA Student Committee seeks papers that challenge the traditional geographic, temporal, and theoretical “edges” of our discipline. We especially welcome papers that reach beyond Europe, thus reflecting the mission of the ICMA to study and understand visual and material culture in every corner of the medieval world.

Potential thematic topics for individual contributions may include, but are not limited to:
- Separation—conceived in intellectual, cartographic, and geographic terms
- Miscommunication and mistranslation
- Diasporic communities and the relationship between colonizer and colony
- Memory, identity, and the (mis)appropriation of cultural heritage, civic, and religious ceremonies

Proposals for both in-person panels must be submitted through the Confex proposal portal.

ICMA VIEWPOINTS OFFICIAL BOOK LAUNCH - IS BYZANTINE STUDIES A COLONIALIST DISCIPLINE? 15 SEPTEMBER 2023 12PM ET - REGISTER NOW!

ICMA Viewpoints Book Launch

Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography

Edited by Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova

Friday 15 September 2023
12pm ET, online

Register HERE

We are delighted to invite you to a virtual event celebrating the publication of the second volume of the ICMA Viewpoints book series, sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art and Penn State University Press! Please join us!

with
Benjamin Anderson • Mirela Ivanova • Roland Betancourt • Eleanor Goodman • Nicholas S. M. Matheou • Elizabeth Dospěl Williams • Alexandra Vukovich  

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Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline? Rather than provide a definitive answer to this question, this book defines the parameters of the debate and proposes ways of thinking about what it would mean to engage seriously with the field’s political and intellectual genealogies, hierarchies, and forms of exclusion.

In this volume, scholars of art, history, and literature address the entanglements, past and present, among the academic discipline of Byzantine Studies and the practice and legacies of European colonialism. Starting with the premise that Byzantium and the field of Byzantine studies are simultaneously colonial and colonized, the chapters address topics ranging from the material basis of philological scholarship and its uses in modern politics to the colonial plunder of art and its consequences for curatorial practice in the present. The book concludes with a bibliography that serves as a foundation for a coherent and systematic critical historiography. Bringing together insights from scholars working in different disciplines, regions, and institutions, Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? urges practitioners to reckon with the discipline’s colonialist, imperialist, and white supremacist history.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Andrea Myers Achi, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Bahattin Bayram, Averil Cameron, Stephanie R. Caruso, Şebnem Dönbekci, Hugh G. Jeffery, Anthony Kaldellis, Matthew Kinloch, Nicholas S. M. Matheou, Maria Mavroudi, Zeynep Olgun, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Jake Ransohoff, Alexandra Vukovich, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, and Arielle Winnik.

Read ICMA News, Summer 2023 online!

ICMA News               

SUMMER 2023
Melanie Hanan, Editor

Click here to read.
Also available on www.medievalart.org

COMMEMORATION
Claire Richter Sherman, 1930–2023
Robert Ousterhout, 1950–2023 26

SPECIAL FEATURES
Dumbarton Oaks Museum Colloquium Examines Mosaic Works Across the Global Medieval World, by Elizabeth McCord

Gaming Goes Medieval, by Larisa Grollemond

REFLECTION
Elina Gertsman Receives CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies, by Cecily Hughes, Reed O’Mara, Sam Truman, and Angelica Verduci

EXHIBITION REPORTS
Notre-Dame de Paris: At the Heart of the Construction Site, by Kris N. Racaniello

The Nature of Things: Medieval Art and Ecology, 1100–1550, by Daria Berman

Riemenschneider and Late Medieval Alabaster, by Rebekkah Hart

EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
 

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The deadline for the next issue of ICMA News is 15 October 2023. Please send information to newsletter@medievalart.org 

If you would like your upcoming conference, CFP, or exhibition included in the newsletter please email the information to EventsExhibitions@medievalart.org.

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