ICMA at International Congress on Medieval Studies Kalamazoo 2024: Sponsored Sessions + Reception

ICMA Sponsored Sessions at International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo
9-11 May 2024

Thursday 9 May 2024, 10:00am
Session 9
Sangren Hall, Room 2110
The Sense of an Ending: Finispieces in Medieval Codices
Presider: Stephen Perkinson, Bowdoin College
Organizer: Julie A. Harris, Independent Scholar

Beginning at the End: The Role of the Table of Contents in the Grandes Heures of Philip the Bold
Maggie Crosland, Washington University in St. Louis / St. Louis Art Museum

Final Authority in Five Illuminated Copies of Boccaccio’s Des Nobles et cleres dames Vérard, 1493
Hope Johnston, Baylor University

Respondent: Julie A. Harris

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Saturday 11 May 2024, 10:00am
Session 368     
Sangren Hall, Room 4715
Cross-Cultural Interaction in the Alps: Medieval Artistic Production in the Historic County of Tyrol

Presider: Katherine M. Boivin, Bard College
Organizer: Sarah F. Cohen, Columbia University; Emma Leidy, Columbia University

Actio or Illustration? The Rodenegg Iwein Cycle and the Staging of Oral Storytelling
Grace Alice Walsh, Johns Hopkins University

Between North and South: The Importation, Production, and Veneration of Vesperbilder in Tyrol
Emma Leidy, Columbia University

A Fatimid Crystal Reliquary in Thirteenth-Century Tyrol: Questions of Cross-Cultural Value and Symbolic Reuse
Sarah F. Cohen, Columbia University
 
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Saturday 11 May 2024, 1:30pm
Session 417     
Sangren Hall, Room 4715
Sites of Tension (1): Islands and Isolation
ICMA Student Committee

Presider: Gilbert Jones, Cleveland State University
Organizers: Gabriela Chitwood, University of Oregon; Brittany Forniotis, Duke University; Shannah Rose, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Gilbert Jones, Cleveland State University; Nina Gonzalbez, Florida State University Islands

Unknown: Small Islands and Insular Lifeways in the Early Medieval Aegean
Demetrios Athanasoulis, Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports; Elizabeth R. Davis, Brown University; Rosie Campbell, Cambridge University; Hallvard Indgjerd, Universitetet i Oslo; Alex R. Knodell, Carleton College; Evan I. Levine, Københavns Universitet; Hüseyin Ç. Öztürk, College Year in Athens

The Colonizer’s Representation of the Colonized: The Construction of Guanche Cultural Identity in Le livre nommé le Canarien
Krystin Cassidy Christy, New York University

“That unhappy wretch will come here to the Iouan island”: Re-Activating the Material Culture of Medieval Iona
Sophie Durbin, University of the Highlands and Islands
 
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Saturday 11 May 2024, 3:30pm
Session 464     
Sangren Hall, Room 4715
Sites of Tension (2): Islands and Interconnectivity
ICMA Student Committee

Presider: Gilbert Jones, Cleveland State University
Organizer: Brittany Forniotis, Duke University; Gabriela Chitwood, University of Oregon; Shannah Rose, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Gilbert Jones, Cleveland State University; Nina Gonzalbez, Florida State University

Claiming Victory: The St. George Chapel of Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral and the Use of Crusading in Image and Liturgy
Patricia Marie McCall, University of Oregon

Between Past and Present: Changing Perceptions of the Aegean Region in a Medieval Island Book
Beatrice Abigail Tamara Blümer, Universität Kassel / Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz

Between Sicily and Palma de Mallorca: The Journey of the Cammarata Finials
Hila Manor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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ICMA Reception at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo

Friday 10 May 2024
7pm-9:30pm (6:30pm Student Meet and Greet)
Kalamazoo, Michigan

6:30pm - Student Meet and Greet
7:00pm - Reception (open to all)

Join other ICMA members for a special off-site reception near campus (approximately a 10-20 minute walk) on Friday 10 May 2024 from 7pm-9:30pm. Students are invited to join early at 6:30pm to meet other student colleagues. Drinks and light bites provided while supplies last.

University Roadhouse
1332 W. Michigan Ave (MAP)
Kalamazoo, MI 49006

CFP: Moving Pictures, Living Objects (ICMA sponsored session at CAA 2025) due 22 April 2024

ICMA sponsored session at CAA (College Art Association)

New York City, 12-15 February 2025
Organisers: Prof. Heather Pulliam, University of Edinburgh Prof. Kathryn Rudy, University of St. Andrews

Many premodern objects require human interaction to animate them and reveal their contents: turning the pages of manuscripts, moving the hinged limbs of figurative sculpture, unrolling scrolls, or opening screens. Others involve the dynamic effects of natural light. Like films or music, many medieval works invite sequential viewing that incorporates repetition and revelation. In art historical research, images do not merely illustrate arguments, they evidence them as much as written text does. Art historians abandoned their slide projectors long ago and have recently embraced e-publishing, but static imagery remains the dominant format for illustrating conference talks and academic publications. However, static images fail to capture aspects of performance essential to the function and meaning of many medieval objects. This session proposes to experiment with a shift in format, one that uses videos or the many tools now available for the analysis of artworks: rotational 3D scans, IIIF, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 3D reconstructions. The session will be the first on premodern art to be exclusively illustrated with moving pictures, testing the boundaries of performativity and reception and questioning how we analyse, discuss, illustrate, and display artworks. This conversation is timely, as we move away from art histories that prioritised European fine art—traditionally static and displayed in galleries—to a more inclusive and diverse definition of art.  We are planning a special-issue journal on this theme, illustrated by moving images. 

The 90-minute session will consist of an introduction by the session organizers; 5 speakers each presenting a 5-minute video and a 7-minute analysis/discussion; and a Q&A.

To apply to be one of the speakers, please send a 250-word abstract to Heather Pulliam h.pulliam@ed.ac.uk and Kathryn Rudy kmr7@st-andrews.ac.uk with ‘ICMA-CAA Abstract’ in the subject line. Deadline: 22 April at 17:00 GMT. In your abstract, be sure to tell us why the academic argument you are making can only be illustrated by moving images.

The ICMA through the Kress Foundation is able to offer reimbursements for domestic travel to New York for up to $600; overseas travel for up to $1200. For the full description of qualified travel expenses, please check the full Kress Travel Grant site: https://www.medievalart.org/kress-travel-grant.

Photo: The Cloisters Collection, 1955

ICMA News, Spring 2024 now available to read!

ICMA News               

Spring 2024
Melanie Hanan, Editor

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

INSIDE
 

Commemorations
Corine Schlief  1949–2023


Special Features

Riding the Winds of Change: Khamseen and Islamic Art History Online, By Christiane Gruber

The Re-Installation of the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, By Jochen Sokoly


Exhibition Reports 

Three Countries, Three Days, Three Very Different Exhibitions: The Lost Mirror: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain; A Journey into Crystal; Dieric Bouts: Creator of Images, By Elizabeth Morrison

Africa & Byzantium, By Tania Kolarik

Le Trésor de Notre-Dame de Paris: Des origines à Viollet-Le-Duc (The Treasury of Notre-Dame Cathedral: From Its Origins to Viollet-le-Duc), By Patricia McCall

Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality, By Shannah Rose

Ethiopia at the Crossroads, By Michelle Al-Ferzly


Events and Opportunities
 

The deadline for the next issue of ICMA News is 15 June 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.

ICMA at AAH 2024: The Past, Present and Future of Medieval Art in the British Isles - Wednesday 3 April 2024

ICMA AT THE ASSOCIATION FOR ART HISTORY ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2024

3-5 April 2024
University of Bristol

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THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF MEDIEVAL ART IN THE BRITISH ISLES

Wednesday 3 April 2024

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.

Session Convenors:
Amanda Luyster, College of the Holy Cross

Matthew M Reeve, Queen’s University

Speakers:
Heather Pulliam, University of Edinburgh: British art c. 600-1066: the state of the field

Meg Boulton, University of York

What lies beneath: reassessing how recently unearthed finds expand the material mesh of the early medieval world

Matthew M Reeve, Queen’s University: The British invasion(s)? Colonisation, climate change, and the contours of Romanesque and Gothic Art 1066-1350

Amanda Luyster, College of the Holy Cross: Seeing ghosts: Islamic and Byzantine textiles and their traces in Gothic England

Julian Luxford, St Andrews University: Addressing British Art after the Black Death: Problems and Possibilities

Eleanor Townsend, University of Oxford: When is an altarpiece not an altarpiece? The Jesse reredos at St Cuthbert’s, Wells

ICMA Graduate Student Essay Award - due SUNDAY 7 April 2024

GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY AWARDS
DUE SUNDAY 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59 PM ET

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) 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 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59pm ET. The winners will be announced at the Spring Board Meeting in May. Recipients will be asked to forward their winning essay to the donor that underwrites the Student Essay Award competition.

Applicants must submit:

1. An article-length paper (maximum 30 pages, double-spaced, not including footnotes) following the editorial guidelines of our journal Gesta. A title page with essay title, author name, contact information, and affiliation must be included.

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.

NOTE ON FILE SUBMISSION: Please submit PDF files when appropriate with the file named as LAST NAME first, then the item. Example: SMITHabstract.pdf, SMITHessay.pdf, SMITHcv.pdf

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

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.

ICMA Student Travel Grants - due Sunday 7 APRIL 2024

STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS
DUE SUNDAY 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59PM ET

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

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.

Applications are due by SUNDAY 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59pm ET. The ICMA will announce the winners of the three grants at the Spring Board Meeting in May.

NOTES ON FILE SUBMISSION: Please upload PDFs when possible (.jpg, .png also accepted) with the file named as LAST NAME first, then the item. Example: SMITHcv.pdf, SMITHbudget.pdf, SMITHthesis.pdf, etc.

Similarly, please notify the thesis advisor to name the file as STUDENT LAST NAME first, then the item. Example: SMITHletter.pdf

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

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

ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant, due Sunday 7 April 2024

ICMA-KRESS EXHIBITION DEVELOPMENT GRANT
Deadline for applications: Sunday 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59pm ET

Upload materials HERE

Thanks to the generosity of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, ICMA members are eligible to apply for an ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant of $5,000 to support research and/or interpretive programming for a major exhibition at an institution that otherwise could not provide such financial support. Members from all geographic areas are welcome to apply.

As an organization, the ICMA encourages scholars to think expansively, exploring art and society in “every corner of the medieval world,” as characterized in our mission statement. With this grant, we hope to encourage colleagues to develop innovative exhibition themes or bring little-known objects before new audiences. We also aim to enhance the impact of exhibitions by supporting related lectures or symposia.

ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant can be used to fund travel in the research and preparation stages of an exhibition and/or to underwrite public programming once a show is installed. This grant is designed to assist with an exhibition already in the pipeline and scheduled by the host museum.

We ask applicants to upload to the ICMA submission site:

• Applicant’s cv

• Description of the exhibition and its goals, including an overview of the structure of the exhibition – themes and estimated number of objects in each section of the show – and dates of the exhibition

• Statement of other sources of funding both secured and provisional, with specifics on the amounts already awarded and expenses to be covered by secured and provisional funding

• Sample wall panel for a subsection of the exhibition and sample labels for 3-4 examples of works in the show

• If the applicant seeks funds to travel to see objects for inclusion in the exhibition, a list of institutions to be visited, names of contacts at each, and key objects (with accession numbers) to be inspected

• If the applicant seeks funds for exhibition programming, specific information on gallery talks, public lectures, or symposium, with anticipated names of speakers and estimated dates

• Letter of support from the Museum Director or Curator with whom the applicant is working, confirming that the exhibition will be mounted

• If funds will be used toward a lecture or symposium connected to an exhibition, letter of support from institutional administrator/s (Dean, Provost, or Museum/Gallery Director) confirming that space at the organizer’s institution will be made available for the event/s

Applications will be reviewed by the ICMA Grants & Awards Committee and approved by the ICMA Executive Committee. The recipient will be announced in May 2024. An update report from the recipient will be due in late Summer 2024.

Questions can be addressed to Ryan Frisinger, Executive Director, at awards@medievalart.org

Upload materials HERE

NEW VIDEO! THE ICMA ANNUAL LECTURE AT THE COURTAULD: TANNCZEN, HELSEN, KUSSEN, VND RAWMEN: OF DANCING AND DALLIANCE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES, NINA ROWE, 7 FEBRUARY 2024

NEW VIDEO!

THE ICMA ANNUAL LECTURE AT THE COURTAULD

TANNCZEN, HELSEN, KUSSEN, VND RAWMEN: OF DANCING AND DALLIANCE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

NINA ROWE

VERNON SQUARE CAMPUS, LECTURE THEATRE 2, LONDON

WEDNESDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2024, 17:30 - 19:00

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

For the link to watch the video, go the Courtauld Lecture section of the Lectures tab on the ICMA website.

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). 

This event was kindly supported by the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA). Series made possible through the generosity of William M. Voelkle.

EXTENDED! ICMA STAHL LECTURE 2024: Call for Nominations, due 15 March 2024

Call for Nominations
ICMA Stahl Lecture
due FRIDAY 15 MARCH 2024

INVITE A STAR TO YOUR CAMPUS (In-person or Virtual)!

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) seeks proposals for in-person or virtual programs under the Stahl Lecture Series to be held under the sponsorship of the organization in 2024-2025. Stahl Lectures are to be sponsored by colleges or universities in what might be termed the greater southwest, at institutions located west of the Mississippi River. Although we have the opportunity to make the program available virtually to all ICMA members, we are interested in proposals that include in-person engagement between students and speakers if conditions and logistics allow. A list of previous Stahl speakers can be found here.

 
Please suggest the name(s) of appropriate speakers and indicate your willingness to host the event at your institution. Please indicate the format of the event and, if applicable, whether your college or university has the infrastructure for a Zoom (or other) webinar and the tech support to launch and troubleshoot a virtual event. Joint proposals—of two or more institutions—are welcome, as traditionally, lecturers are expected to speak at more than one venue. The hosts assume the responsibility for organizing the event, ideally working in conjunction with colleagues at other institutions; for publishing the details in advance on the ICMA website and ICMA News (the newsletter); and for reporting on the event after it is over. International exchange of scholarship is encouraged, though not required.
 
The ICMA will contribute to an honorarium and/or travel costs, depending on the particulars of the speaker and the event itinerary and modality. 

For the Stahl Lecture, please submit your CV and the CV of the proposed speaker, as well as a brief proposal/preliminary itinerary by clicking HERE.

Please direct any inquiries to the members of the “Stahl Subcommittee” of the ICMA Programs & Lectures Committee: Alice Isabella Sullivan (alice.sullivan@tufts.edu); Alison Locke Perchuk (alison.perchuk@csuci.edu); Betsy Williams (elizabethw@doaks.org).

The deadline for the nominations is 15 March 2024 for lectures to be planned for the fall of 2024 or spring of 2025.

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.