Those who are in NY to see this excellent new space at the Met may also
enjoy seeing the Books of Hours and other delights of the Morgan Library
housed in J.P.'s former 'town house' at 36th and Madison. It's a treasure
trove often overlooked by visitors to the Met and the Cloisters.
----- Original Message -----
From: "George FERZOCO" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 8:15 AM
Subject: EXP Byzantine art in New York
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Just in case anyone needs a 'scholarly' excuse to visit New York for the
> holidays. Sigh.
>
> Got this from:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/17/arts/17SMIT.html
>
> Dont sue me, OK?
>
> George
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
>
> November 17, 2000
>
> ART REVIEW
>
> Sailing Again to Byzantium
>
> By ROBERTA SMITH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Like Byzantium itself, the new galleries for Byzantine and early medieval
> art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are centrally located, on the way to
> everything else. Even the most casual visitor to the museum has passed
> through them: the long, broad hallways that run on either side of the
Grand
> Staircase on the museum's main floor, just beyond the central ticket
booths
> in the Great Hall.
>
> Year in and year out, these passages accommodate a steady stream of
visitors
> headed elsewhere: for the Medieval Galleries, the American Wing, the Arms
> and Armor Galleries, the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Galleries
> and beyond. During the holiday season they are especially heavily
traveled,
> being the straight line that is the shortest distance between the main
> entrance and the Christmas tree.
>
> Until now, this route, along with the spaces just behind the Grand
> Staircase, seemed to languish in neglect, like Cinderella. While
everything
> around them was doted on expanded or renovated or both they remained
> untouched for nearly 50 years. Portions of their cases were given over at
> various points to French sculpture, smaller displays of Byzantine art and
> the museum's Greek and Roman Treasury. For a time the north hallway was
even
> ceded to the museum shop.
>
> Now, after three years of redesign, refurbishing and architectural
> exploration, these spaces are definitely a "visitor destination" in their
> own right. It may have helped that Prince Charming, or the Fairy
Godmother,
> finally arrived in the form of Mary and Michael Jaharis, collectors who
have
> lent Byzantine art to the Met and who are the major benefactors of the
> project.
>
> Ingeniously expanded with newfound floor space and reclaimed wall space
(of
> which more later) and brilliantly installed, these new galleries are a big
> deal in a small but impeccable package. Inch for inch, their relatively
> modest 4,900 square feet may cover more ground in history, art mediums
and
> geography than any other permanent galleries at the museum. They bring
the
> Western Hemisphere's premier collection of Byzantine art more completely
> into view than ever before, making the many faces of this complex culture
> and its broad influence intimately available.
>
> The nearly 700 works, often small, range around a quarter of the globe and
> through nearly 15 centuries, tracing a network that reflects the spread of
> religion, warfare, trade, artistic techniques and political domination.
The
> displays include intricately carved ivory icons and reliquaries,
brilliantly
> colored cloisonn้, gleaming liturgical objects, numerous coins, jewelry of
> all kinds, glass, textiles, carved stone sculpture, sarcophagi and
> architectural decoration, and fragments of mosaics and frescoes.
>
> Some of the Met's most prized objects are back on view, including
> seventh-century works like the nine silver and gilded silver chalices of
the
> Attarouthi Treasure and, from an archaeological find known as the Second
> Cyprus Treasure, six silver plates that depict scenes from the early life
of
> David in a robust Classical style that reflects the vitality with which
> Greek and Roman motifs were recycled in the Byzantine world.
>
> One can once more appreciate the full brunt of J. P. Morgan's obsession
with
> early religious art and small valuable objects, as well as the lavishness
of
> his 1917 bequest to the Met, which included more than one- third of the
> artworks in these galleries, the Second Cyprus Treasure among them. And
> recent acquisitions are on permanent view for the first time, like the
> monumental personification of the goddess Ktisis from A.D. 500-550, once
> part of a glass-and- marble mosaic floor.
>
> The deliberately diverse, wide- ranging nature of this installation
> represents what might be called the diffusion approach to art history.
> Instead of an exclusive focus on a single civilization, it operates on the
> theory that singularity is in fact a kind of fiction and that any culture
is
> an inherently unstable sum of parts that are constantly in motion, both
> aesthetically and geographically.
>
> This approach works particularly well with the shifting mass of peoples
and
> cultures that constituted the long-lived Byzantine Empire, founded in 324,
> when the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, having embraced Christianity
> in 313, moved the capital of his empire from Rome to Constantinople. It
> lasted until 1453, when, after nearly two centuries of the empire's
decline,
> the Ottoman Turks seized the capital for good. In between, it produced two
> lengthy golden ages, survived numerous invasions from Slavic and
Germanic
> peoples, Muslims and Christian Crusaders and at various times reached
> north to the Danube, west to Spain, east to Syria and south to Thebes.
> Vikings served as the imperial guard. The empire's ships traveled as far
> east as Sri Lanka, importing silks from China until the Byzantines figured
> out how to raise silkworms themselves.
>
> So it is more than appropriate that these galleries should reveal the
> Byzantine age coming and going. The display even backs up a millennium or
> two to begin with a case of Bronze Age objects from England, Ireland,
> Scandinavia. A bit anomalous, perhaps, but given the amount of northern
> European metalwork here most notably a cache of heavily jeweled,
> ninth-century Frankish disc brooches from Morgan they provide logical
> historical background and a sense of the local cultures with which
Byzantine
> influences interacted.
>
> This varied display also continues what might be called the deflation of
the
> myth of the mystical otherness of Byzantine art, a tack also taken by the
> wide-ranging "Glory of Byzantium" exhibition mounted by the Met in 1997.
> Hence religious objects, like the spectacular Antioch chalice, which
depicts
> Jesus and the Apostles seated among coiling, grape-laden vines, are
> contrasted with things secular: cheaply produced, suavely sgraffitoed
> ceramic plates (think Picasso); griffin-shaped copper-alloy lamps;
cast-iron
> steelyard weights in the forms of Athena and a Byzantine empress.
>
> We are repeatedly reminded that Byzantium was not only the source of the
> seemingly exotic religious art of Armenia and Russia, but of Western
> religious art as well. For example, most of the perspectival challenges
> tackled by Renaissance painting seem to have been outlined in Byzantine
> ivory icons as early as 550, as exemplified by an ivory diptych showing
the
> aged Jesus on one panel and the Virgin and Child on the other. It is
> impossible to look at them without thinking of Masaccio, Piero and the
> Sistine Chapel ceiling. (The diptych is one of three ivories on loan until
> 2002 from the Museum for Byzantine Art in Berlin, currently closed for
> extensive post-Soviet-era renovations. Don't miss them.)
>
> As for the small, impeccable package, the new galleries exemplify the
Met's
> skill at inward expansion. But more important, they seem tailor made for
> this material. The centerpiece of the renovation is the creation of the
tiny
> Crypt gallery, a sloping but arched and brick-lined space under the Grand
> Staircase that was storage space until exhibition designers and curators
> began rummaging around and engineers were consulted about how much could
be
> carved away.
>
> Reminiscent of a catacomb or a pyramid's inner sanctum, the Crypt connects
> the two hallways, forming a configuration now known as the Mary and
Michael
> Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art. It also turns out to be the perfect
> place for light-sensitive textiles including completely intact tunics
> banded with motifs of Dionysian revelers from Byzantine Egypt. And it
> works well for Islamic-influenced architectural decorations in carved
stone
> from Egyptian monasteries, as well as what can only be described as an
early
> gargoyle, a stone carving of a human head jutting out from between
acanthus
> leaves. Every nook in this triple-bayed cranny has been put to use. Nearly
a
> dozen carved stone Egyptian funerary steles early gravestones are
> shoehorned into double-sided vitrines built into floor-level arches.
>
> In addition, the removal of three walls in the gallery behind the Grand
> Staircase has brought to light a curved and domed apselike space covered
> since the 50's. Here, works of early medieval art, including ferocious
stone
> capitals, becalmed wood sculptures of the Virgin and Child, and wonderful
> Carolingian and Ottonian ivories, are on view.
>
> Overhead hangs a larger-than-life carved and painted wood sculpture of
Jesus
> alive on the Cross. It is late 12th-century, from a monastery in northern
> Italy, and it looks toward galleries of medieval art just ahead. But it
also
> looks back, recalling the Byzantine penchant for depicting Jesus on the
> Cross as an alert, dignified and comfortably robed prince rather than a
> suffering martyr. This convention is well illustrated by a vivid late
> eighth-century, enamel reliquary lid in a case in the south hallway. Only
a
> few inches square, it lies in wait for people hurrying past who think
> they've got more important things to look at.
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