www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Icon exhibit at the Met - NY

Some time not posting here.

This time I want to share with you a great surprise I had during my trip to NY two weeks ago. My wife and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I discovered that they have a temporal exhibition of byzantine icons. It is called Byzantium: Faith and Power and will last until July 4, 2004.

The collection is gorgeous. It covers like 6 halls and it's a must see. I really have to acknowledge that my wife was really patient because I stopped at every single icon. They have Pantokrators, Theotokos, Archangels, Christ at the cross with the Theotokos and Saint John, vestments, etc. I really do not know what the museum had to do in order to make such a great display of art.

Those of you in the metro area have no excuse for not seeing it. You can get info in the museum's page at www.metmuseum.org [metmuseum.org]

The collection was located very close to the Medieval Art permanent exhibition which contains great examples of western religious art. It liked that fact because considering the period of both exihibits and being both east/west counterparts made them look as the two faces of the same coin.

Your brother in Christ engraved in one side of the such same coin.

I've seen writeups and flyers about the exhibit. Sounds DEEPLY cool, and I'd love to finagle some way to come see it....

Thanks for the reminder.

Sharon
(In Ohio -it's only a couple inches away on the map....)

Christ is Risen!

The exhibit focuses on the iconography (public and private devotional) and sacred art (reliquaries, vestments, &c...) from 1261-1557, from the emergence from the "Latin captivity" past the Ottoman conquest. Sources include Constantinople, the Balkans, Russia, and an impressive group from St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai. The exhibit also tackles Byzantine influences on sacred art at the "periphery", with pieces from Egypt and Armenian Cilicia. There are pieces that treat Byzantine influences in Ottoman art, including an interesting illustration, "The Birth of Mohammed." Finally, the exhibit treats Byzantine paradigms in latter European art. Leave plenty of time for this exhibit!

God bless,
Christopher

It is a lush and rewarding exhibit (if you can find a quiet day when the hordes of commoners are not stampeding through there, making one's contemplation of the icons all but impossible) but one should ignore most of the "educational" posters and captions: not a few of them are riddled with the most absurd, and therefore risible, errors, easily spotted by those who have passed any upper level course in religious history or linguistics in your average undergraduate program but apparently recondite to those who wrote these things.