Art Review: ‘African Presence in Renaissance Europe,’ at Walters Museum

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

“The Three Mulattoes of Esmereldas” (1599) is one of the
works in “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe."

MARYLAND---In a fall art season distinguished, so far, largely by a bland, no-brainer diet served up by Manhattan’s major museums, you have to hit the road for grittier fare. And the Walters Art Museum here is not too far to go to find it in a high-fiber, convention-rattling show with the unglamorous title of “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe.” Visually the exhibition is a gift, with marvelous things by artists familiar and revered — Dürer, Rubens, Veronese — along with images most of us never knew existed. Together they map a history of art, politics and race that scholars have begun to pay attention to — notably through “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” a multivolume book project edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. — but that few museums have addressed in full-dress style. [link]

Concordia University, Nebraska’s Center for Liturgical Art, Installs Stained Glass Window in Maryland

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Tahlib

"Darkness Broken"

MARYLAND---A nine-foot stained glass window, titled “Darkness Broken” will be installed at The Lutheran Center in Baltimore, Maryland. The over-sized stained glass window began its journey to Baltimore from Seward, Nebraska late this summer following more than a year in the creation at The Center for Liturgical Art at Concordia University. Chase Becker, St. John’s University and editor of the TheSteepleChase blog was involved with the project, and knew this would be of interest to A&O readers. The title of the piece comes from the hymn “Christ, Our Human Likeness Sharing” from the Lutheran Service Book.

From Hebrew school to becoming America's leading Atheist

CNN
By Dan Merica

MARYLAND - Sitting in a chilly hotel hospitality suite in a suburban Maryland hotel, David Silverman plans his attack. As a kid in Massachusetts, Silverman was the only atheist he knew. Silverman was raised Jewish. His parents sent him to Hebrew school and he had a bar mitzvah, even after telling his mother that he did not believe in God. “I remember it clearly, getting up on stage and everybody in my life was in front of me. Everyone,” Silverman says, recalling his bar mitzvah. “And I stood up there, and I looked everyone in the eye, and I lied. I lied. And I hated it.” For Silverman, it was a turning point, a moment when he resolved not to lie about his disbelief. [link]

Hindu Kolam Quilts on Display at Maryland's Tai Sophia Institute

BALTIMORE SUN
By Mike Giuliano

The quilt "Sovereign Service" by Lauren Kingsland

MARYLAND - American quilts have been spiced with Indian influences in the exhibit Pieces as Prayers: Kolam and Kaleidoscope Quilts at the Tai Sophia Institute's Himmelfarb Gallery. Gaithersburg artist Lauren Kingsland's quilts reflect Hindu religious practices she saw during a trip to India. The daily religious ritual that impressed her involved Indian women making designs with rice flour on the ground. This ritual is a manifestation of a belief known as Kolam, which states that making the design is itself a form of prayer. The exhibit Pieces as Prayers: Kolam and Kaleidoscope Quilts continues at the Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel through Aug. 27. [link]

Sacred Spaces: Inside DC's Hindu Temple

CNN
By Anthony Umrani

Hindu temple with corresponding dieties

MARYLAND - On a cool spring evening just outside Washington, a steady stream of worshipers arrive at Sri Siva Vishnu Temple for prayers. People are dressed in a mixture of colorful Indian attire and customary Western clothing. In this residential Maryland neighborhood about 12 miles from downtown, the temple stands out with a striking white exterior adorned with statues depicting Hindu gods. In India, a temple is typically dedicated to one particular god, but the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple has many gods to accommodate the diversity of Indian people in the area. "We have a wide variety of congregation and each one of them says, 'I want this god' or 'I want that god,' " said S. Krishnamurthy, one of the founder/trustees of the temple. [link to video]

Finding Peace and Serenity at the Museum

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
By Aaron Jenzten

"Mediations in the Gallery" at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Photo: STAFF, LISA KRANTZ

NEW MEXICO - Each Saturday morning, Cristina Salgado leads a free meditation session at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Now in its seventh year, the program is just one example of how many museums serve as secular spaces for contemplation. The Baltimore Museum of Art, for example, offers yoga and meditation sessions led by a teacher with an art history degree. Earlier this year, the American Museum of Natural History in New York hosted a week of meditation sessions led by Tibetan monks as part of an exhibit on the neuroscience of contemplative practices. [link]

Vatican Treasures Heading to Britain

UNITED KINGDOM - Following runs in Ohio and Maryland, Treasures from the Vatican, including one of the earliest-known likenesses of Jesus, will be shown in Britain for the first time at the British Museum in London. "Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe" runs from June 23 to October 9. [Source: Press Association]

US Eastern Spirituality as a Group Show at the Copy Cat

RADAR REDUX
March 29, 2011

MARYLAND - The group show Venn Diagram, which consists of drawings, paintings, video and interactive works is currently on view on the fifth floor of the Copy Cat building. Several of the works in the show convey a preoccupation with the eastern spirituality. A persistent concern with eastern spirituality has been in evidence in Baltimore art for a couple years. The spiritual has a funny relationship to visual culture. Spiritual belief or practice is made known through visible signs – religious garments, religious tokens, religious architecture. At the same time, the visible is constantly in conflict with the unseen. The material corrupts the spiritual, and the spiritual becomes a pose, yoga and meditation become fashion. That’s where, according to Gavin, Roche picks it up, once the trappings of eastern sects become part of trash culture. [link]

A "Saint John's Bible" Purchase for Loyola U

THE CATHOLIC REVIEW
March 29, 2011

"Birth of Christ"

MARYLAND - A Heritage Edition of the “Saint John’s Bible,” a fine art reproduction of a handwritten text, will be on display at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore during an evening of prayer and reflection April 5, from 7 to 9 p.m., courtesy of Loyola University Maryland, College of Notre Dame of Maryland and a gift to those institutions from the Mangione Family. [link]

Art Review: A Spiritual Connection

THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 25, 2011

MARYLAND - “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe” at the Walters Art Museum here is the most beautifully mysterious exhibition I’ve seen this season. It’s also a model of institutional sharing. The Walters, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the British Museum, all with deep medieval holdings, have combined their forces brilliantly. [link]

Buying Religious Art on the Cheap

A BALTIMORE, MD NEWS STORY this week offers a reminder that there are many low-cost places to buy religious imagery to add to your home's art collection, and to create your own "domestic church." The story was about an antique store which dedicates a portion of its window to religious items. It reminded me of a wall crucifix that my Uncle Charlie picked up at a neighborhood garage sale, and had stashed in his basement. It is now hanging on my kitchen wall and is a daily reminder that anyplace can be a sacred place. Where have you purchased religious art on the cheap?

Antique Store's Religious Window

THE BALTIMORE SUN
March 13, 2011

MARYLAND -- Bob Gerber, owner of the Antique Man in Fells Point, devotes part of his storefront window to a jumble of religious keepsakes: A reclining Christ, four wood-carved saints, flowers, and signs. Not the most obvious way to lure people into a shop selling antiques, but then again, Gerber sees his religious window, at 1806 Fleet St., as something of a community service. [link]

Gallery at the Park School: Women of the Book: Jewish Artists, Jewish Themes

RADAR REDUX
March 9, 2011

"The Lilith Scroll" by Carrie Ungerman

MARYLAND--To many, art is shared through traditional forms such as painting and sculptures, but Rick Delaney, the exhibitions director of the new gallery titled Women of the Book: Jewish Artists, Jewish Themes, explains in his gallery program that artists’ books emerged in the latter half of the 20th century as an original expression of art. The exhibition challenges visitors “to think about how the words, pictures, and physical form of the object all contribute to the meaning.” When exploring this exhibit, one is struck both by the variety of the pieces and the larger messages represented. The diversity among all the pieces, from a focus on family, the Holocaust, Bible texts, comparative religion, Zionism, prayer and more, the books represent the variety of Jewish thought, practice and experience in the current Jewish American discourse. [link]

Would you pay to see John the Baptist's tooth?

USA TODAY

March 3, 2011

MARYLAND--Martina Bagnoli admits that the exhibit she helps curate here at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore may gross some people out. After all, the display includes 2,000-year-old teeth, shards of bone and splinters from a first-century execution device. But these are not just any teeth, bones and splinters. Tradition holds that they belong to John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, St. Luke, and the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The exhibit, called "Treasures of Heaven," runs through May 15. [link]

Lecture: We are all Warhol's Children

SETON HALL UNIVERSITY
February 22, 2011

NEW JERSEY--Andy Warhol is the world’s most famous American of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry. The icons of the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church were his first exposure to art. His unexpected death in 1987 was followed by the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Rusyn movement for identity, which embraced the flamboyant pop-artist, filmmaker and jet setter as their iconic figurehead. Professor Elaine Rusinko of the University of Maryland will lecture on this impact on Thursday, March 24 in Fahy 236 at Seton Hall. [link]

Treasures of Heaven on East Coast

The Baltimore Sun
February 11, 2011

MARYLAND - The major traveling exhibit, "Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe," which initially opened last fall in Cleveland, will go on display today at the Walters Art Museum. The exhibit, which consists of metal works, sculptures, paintings and illuminated manuscripts from late antiquity through the Reformation, was five years in the making and includes objects on loan from the Louvre, the Vatican and the Holy of Holies, the Pope's private reliquary chapel. After a three-month stay in Baltimore, the art show will cross the ocean to London's British Museum. Collecting relics is the impulse to make imperishable that which is perishable," says The Walters' Martina Bagnoli, who co-curated the exhibit. "The idea is to flesh out something that is revolting and disgusting – human remains – into something precious that will proclaim the glory of God. Human flesh is transformed into gold and jewels." [link]