Opened: November 18, 2008
Some 900 outstanding examples of medieval art created between the fourth and 14th centuries return to view this fall in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's newly expanded Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art and new Gallery for Western European Art from 1050 to 1300. The new galleries incorporate the recently acquired "Jaharis Byzantine Lectionary"—an important, rare, and beautifully ornamented liturgical manuscript from about 1100—in an apse-like space, while the former Medieval Tapestry Hall has been transformed into a grand space for the presentation of western European art from the early Middle Ages.
"The opening of these gallery spaces carries forward the extensive renovation and reinstallation project that began in 2000 with the inauguration of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. "The Museum's collection of medieval art—already one of the finest in the world—was enriched immeasurably by the addition of the Jaharis Byzantine Lectionary. We are proud to show this great manuscript near other important examples of Byzantine art in the apse, a space that is newly added to the Jaharis Galleries and that evokes the ecclesiastical architecture of the time. The Museum is deeply grateful to
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Mary and Michael Jaharis who, in addition to their generous gift of this major work, have supported its dramatic presentation in fully rearranged galleries. Their continued interest in the project has also made it possible for architectural details dating to the Museum's early years to be revealed, renovated, and restored."
Peter Barnet, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, continued: "By displaying the Museum's entire collection of medieval art chronologically, we hope our visitors will find themselves caught up in the sweep of history as they move through the galleries. The reinstallation allows them to learn about the Middle Ages by looking at some of the finest examples of art from the period, which are now presented thematically."
The Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art
Works of art dating from the time of the transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in 330 to the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 are displayed in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art.
The North Gallery continues to feature the Museum's extensive holdings of secular art of the Byzantine and early medieval world, produced throughout the lands of the former Roman Empire and especially the new capital of Constantinople. Among the new additions to the gallery is a unique glass-tile tabletop excavated at Caesarea and generously lent by the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
The South Gallery will add massive tomb doors to its display of the art of the early church. The Museum's collection of early Judaica will also be on display. The secular arts of the middle Byzantine centuries will end the gallery, including works found during the Museum's exploration in the 1920s of the 13th-century crusader fortress at Montfort in present-day Israel. Jewelry from the Rus' to the north of Byzantium as well as Armenian manuscripts and a massive stone cross (Khatchkar) lent by the Museum of History, Yerevan, Armenia, will reflect the cultural diversity of the period.
The Crypt Gallery under the Great Staircase, dedicated to the secular and religious art of the Byzantine province, Egypt, will have a new rotation of textiles from the Museum's extensive collections. A massive curtain fragment decorated with vividly colored columns will be shown along with finely detailed motifs related to the classical period.
The new Apse Gallery at the end of the stairs will display middle and late Byzantine religious objects including icons painted on wood or carved in ivory, steatites, gemstones, and miniature mosaics. Designed to suggest—but not to recreate—a Byzantine church of the period, the space will be set off from the other galleries by an evocation of a templon, the screen that customarily separated the sanctuary (apse) from the public space (nave) in a Byzantine church. The early 12th- to early 13th-century templon will display marble panels and copper plaques with narrative scenes worked in repoussé of the period.
Prominently displayed within the apse will be the Jaharis Byzantine Lectionary. The inclusion of prayers for certain feast days suggests that this manuscript—which contains the parts of the scripture that are read in church services—was made around 1100 for the great church of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, where these specific feasts were celebrated. The lectionary represents the finest period in Byzantine illumination and was made by one of the finest illuminators working in Constantinople at that time. The manuscript will be on public display for the first time since it was shown in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale in 1958.
Gallery for Western European Art from 1050 to 1300
The former Medieval Tapestry Hall will now be devoted to western European works of art in all media from the early Middle Ages to about 1300. A highlight of the gallery will be the Museum's 18-foot-tall Italian ciborium. Made of marble and decorated with colored marble and gilt-glass mosaics, the imposing 12th-century tabernacle-like structure entered the Museum's collection in 1909. On view for many years in the Main Building, in the 1940s it was moved to The Cloisters, the Metropolitan's branch in northern Manhattan. The ciborium originally sheltered the altar in the church of Santo Stefano near Fiano Romano, northwest of Rome, but was removed when the church was secularized sometime after 1889.
Now at the center of the new gallery, the ciborium surmounts a case displaying the Museum's medieval manuscript illuminations on a rotating basis. The initial installation will include one of the exceptional 12th-century Beatus Leaves, which reflect the dynamic power of Spanish medieval art, and an elegant illumination from a 13th-century English royal Psalter. During the first year after the gallery's opening, thanks to a generous loan from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, an important Hebrew manuscript will be displayed nearby. Created in 1290, the Esslingen Mahzor is the earliest dated Hebrew manuscript from medieval Germany.
Adjacent cases will present Italian works, especially examples created in South Italy, at the intersection of western medieval, Byzantine and Muslim cultures. The new gallery will also highlight special loans—ivories, enamel, goldsmiths' work, and sculpture—from the Morgan Library and private collections.
Visible from the north and south Byzantine galleries will be two monumental stained-glass windows on the west wall. Architectural sculptures from the 12th and 13th centuries will be installed near them. Over the entrances to other galleries on the north and south walls of the new medieval gallery will be large painted wood crucifixes. An 8-foot-tall northern Italian example from the late 12th-early 13th century will hang on the north side and a 4-foot-tall French cross from the 13th century will be installed on the south. Flanking the crucifix will be other important early Gothic stained-glass panels.
Below the French cross, new display cases will house metalwork—including the Museum's outstanding collection of aquamanilia—and precious objects, including Parisian ivory statuettes. Below the Italian cross will be goldsmiths' work, ivory, and sculpture, some of which was created along the pilgrimage roads through France, Spain, and England. Among the highlights are reliquaries of Saint Thomas Becket and a recently acquired enamel roundel of the crucifixion from the celebrated abbey of Conques. This magnificent piece has been reunited with its original corner elements, which were given to the Museum in 1917 by J. Pierpont Morgan.
The late medieval stained-glass and the tapestries previously on display in the Medieval Tapestry Hall will now be displayed in the Medieval Sculpture Hall and the Medieval Treasury.
The Architecture
The new Jaharis Galleries occupy a very central and historic part of the Museum's building. The Byzantine art is displayed in the area of the Grand Staircase in the Great Hall: in the North and South Galleries flanking the staircase, in the Crypt Gallery underneath it, and in the Apse Gallery behind it. These spaces were all part of Richard Morris Hunt's Fifth Avenue entrance pavilion, designed in the French Beaux-Arts style in 1895 and completed in 1902. The medieval art from western Europe is housed in a former sculpture gallery in the Museum's first building on the Central Park site, designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould in 1874 and completed in 1880. Here some of the original English Victorian Gothic features have been restored or reconstructed, most notably the polychrome flooring (black and white marble and red slate), and the huge circular windows opening into the gallery from the adjacent gothic-style cast-iron staircases.
The galleries will also feature new wooden cases that replicate the original, pyramidal-top cases from the turn of the century that had been displayed in the Medieval Treasury.
The galleries will also be repainted and new lighting will be installed.
Publication and Related Programs
In summer 2009, The Jaharis Gospel Lectionary: The Story of a Byzantine Book, by John Lowden, will be published by Yale University Press and distributed by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A variety of educational programs and resources will be developed in conjunction with the reinstallation. These will include lectures, gallery talks, films, and events for teachers, students, and families.
The reinstallation is supervised by Peter Barnet, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge, and Helen C. Evans, the Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art, with the assistance of Barbara Drake Boehm, Curator; Charles T. Little, Curator; Melanie Holcomb, Associate Curator; and Brandie Ratliff, Research Associate, all of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Conservation work was provided by the Museum's Objects Conservation Department. Installation design is by Daniel Bradley Kershaw, Exhibition Designer; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Senior Lighting Designers, all of the Museum's Design Department.
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November 10, 2008
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