(New York, February 16, 2005) – The catalogue for Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), The Metropolitan Museum of Art's landmark exhibition of spring 2004, received the College Art Association's (CAA) prestigious Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award, it was announced today. The award was accepted in Atlanta, Georgia, at the annual meeting of the CAA by the Museum's curator of Byzantine art, Dr. Helen C. Evans, who edited the book and organized the exhibition.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557) contains 17 essays on the complex story of the flowering of art and culture among rival claimants to power in the late Byzantine period in an area spanning present-day Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, France, Italy, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro, and FYR-Macedonia.
The lavishly illustrated 680-page catalogue is available in both paperback ($50) and hardcover ($75) editions in the Museum's book shops and through the Museum's Web site (www.metmuseum.org); the hardcover edition is available through Yale University Press. The book accompanied the landmark exhibition Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), which was on view at the Metropolitan Museum – its only venue – from March 23 to July 5, 2004. Through some 350 masterpieces of Byzantine art, the exhibition chronicled the exceptional artistic flowering of late Byzantine art in a period often considered only in terms of political decline.
The exhibition was made possible by Alpha Bank.
Sponsorship was also provided by the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation, the A. G. Leventis Foundation and the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.
Additional support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
An indemnity was granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The exhibition curator and catalogue editor for Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557) is Helen C. Evans, a specialist in early Christian and Byzantine art and a curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Recent exhibitions organized by Dr. Evans include Textiles of Late Antiquity (1996), The Glory of Byzantium, A.D. 843-1261 (1997), and The Glory of Byzantium at Sinai: Religious Treasures from the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Egypt (1997, also at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece). Dr. Evans also co-organized the Museum's reinstallation of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Byzantine Art (2000) and the Treasury of the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt (2001).
To date, Metropolitan Museum catalogues have won the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award six times, more than any other museum. Previous winners are: in 2004, The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni); in 2003, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (Thomas P. Campbell et al.); in 1990, Painting in Renaissance Siena: 1420-1500 (Keith Christiansen, Laurence Kanter, and Carl Brandon Strehlke); in 1982, The Great Bronze Age of China (Wen Fong et al.); and in 1981, The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (Kurt Weitzmann et al.).
Established in 1980, the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award is presented annually to the author or authors of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in the English language under the auspices of a museum, library, or art collection. Nominations are submitted by publishers, the CAA membership, jury members, book review editors, and field editors.
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