Icon exhibit and related events at the University of Wisconsin, Madison

Hi Folks - Thought you might be interested in the events noted below
and being held in Madison generally at the Chazen Museum at the
University of Wisconsin.

Susan

Dr. Susan Smith
Independent Scholar
Washington D. C.

-----------------
Holy Image, Sacred Presence: Russian Icons, 1500–1900
March 12 through June 5, 2011  |  Mayer GalleryMadison, Wisconsin,
January 31, 2011—The icon is a distinctive form of holy image in
Eastern Orthodox cultures, intended to evoke sacred presence by
appealing to the senses. Holy Image, Sacred Presence: Russian Icons,
1500–1900 will present about thirty works from the museum’s permanent
collection to explore the distinctive devotional functions, religious
experiences, iconography, and changing styles of Russian icons from
the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries. Examples include a
mandylion (miraculous image of the face of Jesus), proskynetaria and
iconostasis panels from Orthodox churches, and small devotional icons
for private use. The exhibition is on view March 12–June 5, 2011.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, many monasteries and
churches were closed and the best icons were collected in state
museums. Those dating from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries were
prized as representing traditional Russian culture. By contrast,
Soviet experts denigrated the style and iconography of later icons
from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries as “contaminated” by
Western European influence. It was these icons that the Soviets either
relegated to museums of religion or, beginning in the 1930s, sold to
foreign tourists and diplomats in government-run shops. American
collectors first became aware of Russian icons in the 1920s at
official Soviet exhibitions in New York and Boston, and through sales
of “imperial Russian treasures” in department stores in the early
1930s.

The museum’s icon collection originated in 1937 with the gift of
twenty-three icons by Joseph E. Davies, a prominent lawyer, UW
alumnus, and American ambassador to the Soviet Union (1937–1938).

Related Events
Thursday, March 24, 2011, Artist Lecture
7:30 p.m. “Eastern Orthodox Icons: Venerable Paintings and their
Makers.” Icon painter David Giffey will give an illustrated lecture on
the working methods, materials, and context of Byzantine icon
painting. He has documented historic examples in Eastern Europe and
the Middle East and painted the iconography at the Assumption Greek
Orthodox Church in Madison. Gallery hours will be extended to 7:30
prior to the lecture. This event is cosponsored by the Chazen and the
Department of Art History with funds provided by the UW Arts Institute
Year of the Arts.

Friday, March 25, 2011, Curator Lecture and Exhibition Reception
5:30 p.m. Lecture by guest curator and UW–Madison professor of art
history Thomas E. A. Dale
6:30–8 p.m. Reception for the exhibition Holy Image, Sacred Presence:
Russian Icons, 1500–1900 with refreshments and a cash bar.

Saturday, March 26, 2011, Cinematheque Film
7 p.m. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Tini zabutykh predkiv). USSR,
1966, 97 min., directed by Sergei Paradjanov, in Ukranian with English
subtitles.
UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
With Ivan Mikolajchuk, Larisa Kadochnikova, Tatyana Bestayeva. Set in
the harsh and beautiful Carpathian Mountains, Paradjanov’s masterpiece
chronicles a doomed love between Ivan and Marichka, a couple from
feuding families, and Ivan’s life and marriage after Marichka’s death.
The deeply affecting story merges myth, hypnotic religious
iconography, history, poetry, folklore, music, and dance, and remains
one of the supreme works of Soviet cinema.

Friday, April 15 and Saturday, April 16: Symposium
“Russian Icons in Context.” Scholars from Russia and the United States
will present recent research on Russian icons—context, collecting, and
changing roles in religion and Russian life.
Friday April 15, Room L140
• 5:00 p.m. Keynote lecture: “Russian Icons and the Making of Sacred
Spaces,” by Alexei Lidov, director of research at the Institute for
World Culture at the Moscow State University
Saturday April 16, Room L150
• Morning session, 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. “History, Collecting and
Perception of Russian Icons.” Leonora Neville, associate professor of
history, UW–Madison, on “The Emergence of the Icon Tradition”; Judith
Deutsch Kornblatt, professor of Slavic languages and literature,
UW–Madison, on “Icons in the Russian Religious Renaissance and the
Russian Revolution”; Irina Shevelenko, assistant professor of Slavic
languages and literature, UW–Madison, on “The 1913 Moscow Exhibition
of Old Russian Art and the Perception of Icon Painting in Russian
Artistic Circles”; and Karen Kettering, vice president and specialist
in Russian art, Sotheby’s, New York, on “Joseph Davies and Collecting
Russian Icons in the Early Twentieth Century.”
• Afternoon session: 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. “New Research on Russian
Icons in the Chazen Museum of Art—Iconography, Ritual, Sacred Space.”
Case studies of individual icons in the exhibition, presented by UW
students.

The symposium is free and open to the public. For more information
call 608-263-2340. The symposium is organized by the Department of Art
History and co-sponsored by the Chazen Museum of Art and the
Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. Funds have been
provided by the Alice D. Mortenson-Michael B. Petrovich Chair in
Russian History, the Anonymous Committee, the Arts Institute and Year
of the Arts program funds, the Center for Russia, East Europe, and
Central Asia (CREECA), the Department of Art History, the Medieval
Studies Program, and the Russian Flagship Center in the UW–Madison
Language Institute.

Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by the Chazen
Museum of Art Council; Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State
of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts; and Dane County
Cultural Affairs Commission.
_______________________________________________
Shera mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.oakland.edu/mailman/listinfo/shera