Curator Barbara Drake Boehm looks at medieval representations of martyrs Saint Thecla and Saint Catherine in honor of their autumn feast days.

Artist Catherine Opie reflects on the Louis XIV bedroom in this episode of The Artist Project.

The Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine, situated among the mountains of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, is the oldest continuously active monastery in the world. Recorded as a Christian pilgrimage site as early as the fourth century, it is located where Moses is thought to have seen the Burning Bush and to have received the Ten Commandments. In the sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great (r. 527–67) ordered the building of an impressive church and fortifications for the Monastery to protect the surrounding imperial land. Later generations of pilgrims added gifts of icons, manuscripts, embroideries, altar furnishings, and other liturgical objects and works of art. The Holy Monastery still receives many pilgrims and visitors each year, attracted by its history, its sanctity, and its scenic beauty. In this handsome and informative book, the Monastery and its buildings are presented in many newly commissioned color photographs: included are views of the richly decorated sanctuary of the sixth-century church as well as images of the world's most outstanding collection of icons. The Introduction by His Eminence Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and the essay on the Holy Monastery by Helen C. Evans augment the powerful and dramatic photographs of the site, some of them from the Monastery's archives. Additional photographs and the descriptive captions that accompany the pictures were provided by members of the Monastery's monastic community.

The young czar, feeling oppressed by the medieval traditions and ecclesiastical patriarchy of seventeenth-century Moscow, wanted to Westernize Russia in a hurry, defying the sluggish pace of history.

"I want to give haute couture a kind of wink, a sense of humour—to introduce the whole sense of freedom one sees in the street into high fashion; to give couture the same provocative and arrogant look as punk—but of course with luxury and dignity and style." So says Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion designer who, for over a quarter of a century, has been hailed as a fashion genius—"the master of the streets of the world" as Diana Vreeland puts it. Here are more than 200 of his greatest designs, dramatically reproduced in colour and black and white. Also included are a revealing autobiographical essay by Yves Saint Laurent himself and fascinating insights by Catherine Deneuve, Paloma Picasso-Lopez, Marella Agnelli and others.

On the 40th anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s exhibition at The Met, we revisit the connection between fashion and art.

Barbara Drake Boehm, Paul and Jill Ruddock Curator, explores the legend of Saint James and his shrine in Spain and the many depictions of him in the Met's collection.

Collections Management Assistant Alexa Schwartz details prints from an early seventeenth-century guidebook to the Monte della Vernia in the Tuscan Apennines.