Photo Courtesy of The Walters Art Museum

In one exhibition, The Walters Art Museum has transformed five gallery spaces into five worlds. “A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe” encourages visitors to appreciate art on multiple sensory levels, rather than with sight alone.  

Immediately, guests are sent into a medieval garden with the towering “Tapestry with Narcissus at the Fountain” and “The Garden of Love and Lover Sleeping, in Le Roman de la Rose,” an illustration in the 13th century love poem “The Romance of the Rose” told as a dream sequence.

“Gardens were a place of perfect sensation,” said Curator Martina Bagnoli. The works are enhanced with a soundbite of birds chirping.

Following, there is a gallery called, “The Senses Imagined” and “Moralized Sensation” both of which focus on the interconnection between cognition and sensory experience in medieval theory and the influence of the senses on morality, respectively.

“The point was to be able to walk that fine line between sin and enlightenment because of the senses,” said Bagnoli.

“A Sense of God” shows how each sense was factored into the medieval religious experience. This part of the exhibition is the most interactive as guests can smell incense wafting through the air, hear a soundscape of a bell that is also on view in the exhibition and touch a recreation of a scented medieval rosary.

Photo Courtesy of The Walters Art Museum

Here hangs one of the most fascinating works in the exhibition, “The Glorification of the Virgin,” which shows the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child ringing a handbell, haloed in light and surrounded by darker angels playing heavenly music. 

Bagnoli commented on this piece and how it merges the sounds of the bells and the music of the angels, saying, “It’s a sound that’s deafening and scary at the same time because it is the sound of God.”

At the end of this section of the exhibition, the idea of the fluidity between “sin and enlightenment” is again brought up. There are multiple pieces that depict or represent the wounds of Christ, each with unique erotic undertones.

Many of these items were worn for protection, like the “Roll with Magic Figures and the Five Wounds of Christ” which was worn during childbirth. Others were kissed or touched during prayer, like “The Five Wounds of Christ, in the Loftie Hours” where evidence of this touch can be seen on the parchment.

Then, Bagnoli transports visitors into a completely different atmosphere. This gallery is where the literal interpretation of the “feast” from the title of the exhibition really comes into play, as ornately decorated silverware and dishes are displayed, as well as scenes from medieval banquets in different mediums.

Finally, guests are taken through medieval bodily care, courtship and games before reaching “Body and Soul: Gardens of Love.” Here, the exhibition comes full circle, as visitors are reminded of that very first tapestry with a video playing on a loop that was shot in a medieval-style garden.

In “A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe” Bagnoli and the Walters exhibition team have not only created a more accurate way to experience medieval art, but have also pieced together a narrative that allows visitors to understand medieval life in a completely new light.

“A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe” will be on display at The Walters Art Museum until Jan. 8, 2017.

Editor’s note: Meghan Allis is an intern at The Walters Art Museum.

The post New Walters exhibit reconsiders medieval sensory experience appeared first on The Retriever.

City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of

Immigrant New York

a special lecture by

Dr. Tyler Anbinder

Professor of History

George Washington University

Monday, November 14 at 5:30

Dresher Center Conference Room (PAHB 216)

Tyler Anbinder is a specialist in nineteenth-century

American politics and the history of immigration and

ethnicity in American life. His new book City of

Dreams tells the story of New York City from the

perspective of immigration, with memorable

characters both beloved and unfamiliar, whose lives

unfold in rich detail.

Faculty Working Group on International Migration

Kimberly Ellison-Taylor ’93, information systems management, is the new chairman of the board of directors for the American Institute of CPAs. Ms. Ellison-Taylor is head of global account strategy for Oracle America, and served on the AICPA board for four years prior to accepting the chairman position.

Oliver Myers ’94, M1, mechanical engineering, M.S. ’96, mechanical engineering, and Ph.D. ’07, mechanical engineering, who’s now an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University, recently spoke to the USM Foundation about the effect the Meyerhoff Scholars program has had on his life and career: “You don’t consider the impact when you’re going through school, but thinking about it now, it weighs heavily.”

Ephesians 3:17b-19 – “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

“…Forgiveness of sins and justification are good news because they remove obstacles to the only lasting, all-satisfying source of joy: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not merely the means of our rescue from damnation; he is the goal of our salvation. If he is not satisfying to be with, there is no salvation. He is not merely the rope that pulls us from the threatening waves; he is the solid beach under our feet, and the air in our lungs, and the beat of our heart, and the warm sun on our skin, and the song in our ears, and the arms of our beloved.

“This is why the New Testament often defines the gospel as, simply, Christ…Therefore to believe the gospel is not only to accept the awesome truths that 1) God is holy, 2) we are hopeless sinners, 3) Christ died and rose again for sinners, and 4) this great salvation is enjoyed by faith in Christ - but believing the gospel is also to treasure Jesus Christ as your unsearchable riches. What makes the gospel Gospel is that it brings a person into the everlasting and ever-increasing joy of Jesus Christ.

“The words Jesus will speak when we come to heaven are: ‘Enter into the joy of your Master’ (Matt 25:21). The prayer he prayed for us ended on this note: ‘Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory’ (John 17:24). The glory he wants us to see is the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ.’

“…The gospel is the good news that the everlasting and ever-increasing joy of the never-boring, ever-satisfying Christ is ours freely and eternally by faith in the sin-forgiving death and hope-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ. May God give you ’strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’ (Eph 3:18-19).”
(From John Piper’s What Is the Christian Gospel?)

Today let’s continue to pray Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 for ourselves and others.

-AP

H3IT 2016 is organizing its third annual international conference for all stakeholders interested in leveraging health information technology (HIT) in home and hospice care. The event will be held in Chicago, IL on Nov 11, 2016 and will be chaired by Dr.Gunes Koru.

H3IT conference provides a forum where evidence-based research findings, information, and tools are communicated to achieve better health outcomes, quality of care, utilization of and access to care, and reduced care costs in home and hospice care settings. It's interdisciplinary and applied elements make the conference highly relevant to the patients, providers, payers, vendors, and governments.

We request you and your colleagues to attend H3IT 2016. we look forward to seeing you in Chicago!

Statistics and Big Data at Google

Dr. Tim Hesterberg, Google
5:00-6:00pm Thursday, 3 November 2016
UC 310, UMBC