Ad Imaginem Dei: Some Sad News

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Some Sad News

Museum of Biblical Art

Yesterday I received an email from the Museum of Biblical Art. It was sent to their mailing list and announced that at the end of the current exhibition, Sculpture in the Age of Donatello, the museum will close. That is a very sad situation and says a lot about the current state of affairs in New York real estate and the dilemma of non-profit institutions. The museum website has the same announcement.

The museum has been in existence for ten years. It was founded to provide a venue for the study of what has been one of the major themes of Western art for centuries, biblical stories. It was able to operate because it had a favorable arrangement with the American Bible Society which contributed space in its building on Broadway near Lincoln Center. That landlord-tenant relationship proved to be a happy one. The museum went on to host some very interesting and well-received exhibitions, some of which I have previously written about.

Giovanni D'Ambrogio, Annunciation
Italian, late 14th Century
Florence, Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore

Now, however, the relationship that allowed the museum to thrive has turned sour. For various reasons the American Bible Society decided last year that they would be better off selling their building and moving out of New York. They have relocated to Philadelphia. Apparently, plans for the move were not shared with the museum until virtually the last minute, leaving the museum administration to scramble at short notice to find a new location and the funding to support it in an overheated real estate climate that is not friendly to an underfunded non-profit institution in search of a new home. This is a great pity.

The museum will remain open until the end of the current exhibition on June 14. I saw the exhibition about a month ago and was overwhelmed by what it contains, in spite of the fact that there are relatively few pieces on display. But what pieces! I intend to write about it, but want to make a second visit to absorb more of the details. However, in the interim, I urge you to go and see it as soon as you can. It is well worth a visit. It is unfortunate that no future exhibitions will follow it.

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Uniquely among the monotheistic religions Christianity permits the use of images of God. Why? The answer lies in the Christian belief in the reality of the Incarnation. Since God has assumed human nature and form the Biblical prohibition against making images of God ceases to apply. As the second Council of Nicea declared in 787 "Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets."
(Council of Nicaea II: DS 600)

This decree of Nicea II was promulgated for the entire church, both Greek and Latin speaking, and was a response to the strongly held beliefs of the iconoclasts, who wished to suppress the use of images, which had convulsed the Byzantine Empire and the eastern churches for almost 100 years. In addition, St. John Damascene, last of the Greek Fathers and a staunch defender of images, had written in De imagine ("In Defense of Images") "Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, (Bar. 3.38) I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter." (St. John Damascene, De Imagine, Part I, 15-16, from Internet Medieival Sourcebook.)

The ways in which this imaging of the divine has been accomplished in the course of time is the subject of Christian iconography. To quote from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, iconography is "1: pictorial material relating to or illustrating a subject; 2: the traditional or conventional images or symbols associated with a subject and especially a religious or legendary subject; 3: the imagery or symbolism of a work of art, an artist, or a body of art".

The iconography of any subject develops and changes over time. Christian iconography develops and changes too, as reflection on the Gospels and Tradition develops over time and as the act of making art develops and changes as well. This is the background for this blog.

Ad Imaginem Dei

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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Some Sad News

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Central Park Sunset

Oscar Wild 1997(?)-2014