Treasures and Talismans: Rings from the Griffin Collection at The Cloisters Museum & Gardens

Worn by women and men, finger rings are among the oldest and most familiar forms of jewelry. In addition to their use as personal adornments, rings can serve as declarations of status, markers of significant life events, expressions of identity, and protective talismans. Some three dozen ancient, medieval, and later examples are shown in the exhibition Treasures and Talismans: Rings from the Griffin Collection, that opened May 1 at The Cloisters—a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. The collection is named after the mythical creature that was part lion and part eagle. In medieval lore, the griffin was often a guardian of treasure and was known for seeking out gold in rocks—hence its fitting use for this private collection of precious gold rings. 

http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/exhibitions/2015/treasures-and-talismans

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Registration for The Senses and Visual Culture from Antiquity to the Renaissance (University of Bristol, June 8-9, 2015) is now open

This conference will explore the complex relationship between the visual and the sensory in contemporary theory and ancient practice. It will investigate the ways that art, from icons to illuminated manuscripts, music to architecture, and poetry to theatre, acted as a space for thinking about sensory experience, and for representing sensory ideas and theories. It will bring together scholars from a range of fields, including Classics and Ancient History, Medieval and Byzantine Studies, Musicology, Museum Studies and the History of Art, to explore these questions in the context of different historical periods and cultures, and in terms of politics, religion, philosophy, and society in the pre-Modern era.

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Call for papers: Saint Martin, expansion and revivals in his popularity from the origins to the present day.

The international symposium organized in Tours in 2016 aims to address the martini an figure in all its breadth and all its influence. Several scientific fields, History, Archeology, Art History, Literary Studies, Ethnology and Anthropology, Theology, Economics, are called to focus on some fundamental issues that may arise in the following way :

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