Byzantine Women and Their World
Opens at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum October 25, 2002
First U.S. Exhibition to Explore the Role of Byzantine Women in Public and Private Spheres through Works of Art
Organized by Harvard University Professor and Interns as Part of Byzantine Art Seminar Offered at Harvard University
CAMBRIDGE, MA (September 18, 2002)-This fall Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum will be the first U.S. museum to present an exhibition exploring the life of Byzantine women through art of the era. The display will feature almost 200 objects, including jewelry, icons, religious amulets, textiles, coins, and household items, that date from the 4th through 15th centuries. Byzantine Women and Their World opens October 25, 2002 and will remain on view through April 27, 2003.
The exhibition and an accompanying catalogue grew out of a graduate seminar taught at Harvard University by Ioli Kalavrezou, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Art. To develop the project, Kalavrezou and three of her graduate students, Alicia Walker, Elizabeth Gittings, and Molly Fulghum Heintz, worked for more than two years researching the Byzantine collections at Harvard and at other North American museums. Each of the students served as Andrew W. Mellon interns, a position awarded by the Harvard University Art Museums and funded by the Mellon Foundation for the express purpose of fostering research and teaching between the Art Museums and university departments. The internship program provides new opportunities for students to collaborate with conservators, curators, and faculty from the Art Museums and greater Harvard community, and illustrates the Art Museums' role as a catalyst for creating opportunities for inter-departmental collaboration and study.
"The Harvard University Art Museums are remarkable for their value as a teaching resource and provide a forum for academic exchange within the campus community," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "Collaborations such as Byzantine Women and Their World, testify to the Art Museums' commitment to the advance of art historical training by providing exceptional opportunities for students and faculty to work together through the development of scholarly exhibitions."
Traditionally, exhibitions of Byzantine art focused on the spirituality and splendor of the Empire. This will be the first exhibition in this country to consider the everyday life of the Byzantine woman and to present all facets of the female experience - religious and secular, public and private, noblewoman and commoner.
The exhibition will be divided into the general categories of public and private life, with the theme of "Women at Work" linking the two. The public sphere, which includes sections on "Civic Life," "Elite Women," and "Public Devotion," focuses on female images of authority, such as empresses, the Virgin Mary, female saints, and personifications of cities. The portraits of imperial women on official statuary, weights, coins, and seals promoted women as public icons.
"Civic Life" includes emblems of communal identity, such as a bronze figure of Tyche, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tyche is a personification of the city's fortune and represents a female figure as a symbol of prosperity. The portraits of empresses on the coins and weights in this section emphasize the importance of women as symbols of the economy and wealth of the empire.
The objects in the "Elite Women" section emphasize the role of women as patrons of the church, city, and state and as models for accepted notions of female piety and public behavior. "Public Devotion" explores the ways in which public icons, especially those of the Virgin Mary, represented the authority, security, and morality of the state, as well as that of public officials, aristocrats, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The section devoted to "Women at Work" represents the space between public and private that varied with vocation and lifestyle. While some women's professions were highly visible, as represented by the silver statuette of a dancer on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, most worked at home at spinning and weaving, occupations Byzantines generally regarded as most appropriate for women. "Women at Work" includes icons, ivory plaques, sculptures, manuscripts, and weaving implements. Midwifery is among the professions represented, and there is a striking image of Eve working at a forge.
The private life of most Byzantine women centered on marriage and family, themes explored in sections titled "Marriage," "Home," "Adornment," and "Health and Well-Being."
A model Byzantine marriage was one in which husband and wife formed an equal partnership, a relationship celebrated through jewelry such as the exquisite gold medallions adorning a marriage belt, possibly given to a bride by her husband, on loan from Harvard's Byzantine Collection at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C.
The jewelry and toiletries featured in the section on "Adornment" offer insight into the status of the female body in Byzantium and accepted notions of idealized feminine beauty. The bracelets, earrings, and necklaces in this section, as well as ivory boxes with reliefs of mythological scenes or vignettes from the story of Adam and Eve, might have served as wedding gifts.
"Home" explores the private life of the Byzantine woman through utensils, tapestries, lamps, metal vessels, ceramic ware, and other household items reflecting the domestic spaces in which women spent the majority of their time. In "Health and Well-Being," the physical and emotional challenges that women faced and women's responses to them are illuminated through protective amulets and other devices intended to secure health, fertility, and good fortune. Religious icons featuring the Virgin Mary and female saints illustrate how objects of personal devotion made these holy figures accessible as intercessors with Christ.
A fully illustrated catalogue organized according to the exhibition themes will accompany Byzantine Women and Their World. The catalogue will feature introductory essays written by Kalavrezou and noted Byzantine historian Angeliki Laiou, as well as section essays by Walker, Gittings, Heintz, and Bissera Pentcheva (Harvard PhD '01). Harvard students and other scholars in the field have contributed catalogue entries. A conference sponsored by the Art Museums' M. Victor Leventritt fund is scheduled for March 2003.
The exhibition and catalogue have been supported by generous donations from The Florence Gould Foundation, The J. F. Costopoulos Foundation, The M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Fund, The Parthenon Group, Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Weatherbie, The Louise E. Bettens Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Educational Initiatives, Mr. and Mrs. Jose M. Soriano, The Carnegie Corporation, Mr. Joseph Koerner, The Gurel Student Exhibition Fund, Mrs. Jessie Lie Farber, The Goldman Sachs Foundation, The Diane Heath Beever Fund, and anonymous donors.
The Arthur M. Sackler Museum's Collection of Ancient Art
The Arthur M. Sackler Museum's collection of ancient art includes approximately 25,000 objects of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Byzantine origin. Among them are vases, sculpture in stone and bronze, metalwork, terracotta, glass, glyptics, textiles, artworks of wood, ivory, and bone, and an important collection of ancient coins.
About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are one of the world's leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey.
The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.
For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation's premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.
Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum are located at 32 Quincy Street in Cambridge. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum is located next door at 485 Broadway. Each Museum is a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA station.
Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Sunday 1 - 5 p.m.; the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $6.50; $5 for seniors; $5 for students; and free for those under 18 years of age. The Museums are free to everyone on Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. until noon. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. More detailed information is available at 617-495-9400 or on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.
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For more information on this project or the Harvard University Art Museums, please contact:
Matthew Barone
Harvard University Art Museums
tel 617-495-2397; fax 617-496-9762
mbarone@fas.harvard.edu
or
Kim Gilbert/Allison Derusha
Resnicow Schroeder Associates
tel 212-671-5157; fax 212-595-8354
kgilbert@resnicowschroeder.com
aderusha@resnicowschroeder.com