Transcendent Art: Icons from Yaroslavl, Russia
Monday, September 22nd, 2008 through Saturday, January 24th, 2009
This exhibition features 54 extraordinary icons from the Yaroslavl Art Museum. The treasured, and once venerated icons on view were painted in the 17th and 18th centuries, considered "The Golden Age" of Yaroslavl's cultural and commercial life. Separating the exquisite icons of Yaroslavl from others of the same period is the highly decorative quality, the free composition, the mass of architectural detail and lavishly decorated robes to tell a story through a common symbolic language.
The Yaroslavl Art Museum's collection includes icons rescued from local churches by those devoted to preserving the local traditions, culture and art in the troubled post-revolutionary years. After the Revolution of 1917, Soviet authorities waged a war on the age-old traditions of Russian Orthodox believers, destroying many churches together with the ancient art they housed. The Soviet anti-religious campaign resulted in the devastation of thousands of venerated icons. In the early 1920s, a small group of scholars and art restorers from Yaroslavl set up an art restoration committee to rescue hundreds of valuable icons. Relabeled "monuments of easel painting" and "objects of folk art," numerous icons were removed from churches on the eve of their destruction and stored in a restoration facility. The efforts to preserve and protect those that were salvaged attest to the unfading importance of these objects to the people of Russia.
To make a reservation for one of the lectures listed below, please contact Lynda Holker at lholker@tmora.org
Dr. Wendy Salmond
The Icons of Yaroslavl: From Church to Museum and Back Again
Professor Salmond is a scholar of Russian and early Soviet art, architecture, and design. She is the author of "Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs," a volume that accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Alexei Lidov
Miraculous Icons and Cultural Identity in Byzantium and Russia
Dr. Lidov earned his Ph.D. in Art History at Moscow State University. He has been a visiting fellow of the British Academy, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and the College de France in Paris. Among his many publications are: "The Miracle-Working Icon in Byzantium and Old Rus'", "Byzantine Icons of Sinai", and "The Iconostasis: Origins-Evolution-Symbolism." His lecture is entitled "Miraculous Icons and Cultural Identity in Byzantium and Russia."
Dr. Roy R. Robson
Icons: What do you do with them, anyway?
Professor Robson specializes in Russian History, European History, and Intellectual Heritage. He is currently the Coordinator of the Intellectual Heritage Program at the University of the Sciences. Dr. Robson is the author of
"Old Believers in Modern Russia" and "Solovki: The Story of Russia Told Through Its Most Remarkable Islands."