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A Slice of Russia EXPLORATIONS A Slice of Russia Gilded icons, stark portraits, and a warm tea room • by Nell Porter Brown A former carpet factory (top left) was renovated to house the Museum of Russian Icons. An elegant interior spiral staircase leads to exhibits, including a circa 1450 painting of John the Baptist; a round 1650, somewhere in what um holds more jeweled icon of Saint George and was then Russian territory, an than 700 such the dragon; and bathers on display in Siberia Imagined and Reimagined. artist transformed a piece of objects—one of A wood into a devotional object. the world’s largest collections. They range photographs that explore lives and the On it, he painted a scene from The Presen- from a circa 1450 panel depicting John the landscape in Siberia Imagined and Reimagined, tation of Mary, a pivotal Christian theologi- Baptist and minutely detailed liturgical cal- on display through January 10. cal event. The Gospel of James recounts that endars, on which each day is represented by Icons are integral to the Russian Ortho- after God granted her elderly parents’ wish a saint, to a circa 1600 set of arched doors dox Church. “They are windows into the for a child, they dedicated the Virgin to His through which the clergy enter the sanc- spiritual world,” museum docent Michael service and handed her over at age three to tuary, to an icon created in 2006 by Alyona Popik explained during a recent tour. “And the high priest at the temple. She lived there Knyazeva depicting Saint Andrei Rublev, believers will say that it’s through the for 12 years before rejoining the world. the famous medieval painter of icons and power of God that the icon can do things.” That painting now hangs at the Museum frescoes. The museum has its own tea room, Yet depicting religious subjects was, even of Russian Icons, in Clinton, Massachusetts. and hosts performances, lectures, and work- in the early centuries of Christianity, prob- Founded by art collector and retired indus- shops, along with rotating exhibits on Rus- lematic. During the latter 700s, images trialist Gordon B. Lankton in 2006, the mse- sian art and culture, such as the arresting were banned and burned, and protesters 16F NovemBer - DecemBer 2014 Photographs courtesy of the Museum of Russian Icons Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 141110_LuxBondGreen.indd 1 9/16/14 2:05 PM HARVARD SQUARED were cruelly punished. These carved and The Presentation of Mary icon features “There was always talk gilded “Royal Doors” to a folk-art style that is nevertheless quite and conflict in Constan- a church altar (circa 1600) intricate. It shows the principal players, depict the Annunciation tinople in the 700s and and the four Evangelists. all with golden haloes, on the steps of the 800s about whether this Such artifacts are temple, with onlookers and ornate Byzan- violated the command- rarely seen in museums tine buildings in the background. “I love outside Russia. ment ‘Thou shall not the architecture and the patterns,” says worship false idols,’” leading to the creation of Tara Young ’96, the museum’s deputy di- Popkin says, stopping in an entirely new icon that rector. “But it also captures this rite of pas- front of a variation on the has been replicated ever sage. Even if you don’t know the story, you icon The Mother of God, since. know what’s happening. And you wonder known as The Mother of Icons may be simple how her parents might be feeling about God of the Three Hands, painted wood, formal letting go of their three-year-old. There a testament to those paintings covered with is something about how each icon tells a times. The monk Saint decorated metalwork whole story in a single moment that is fas- John Damascus had his through which only cinating.” hand cut off for his zeal- faces and hands can Young, who was an art-history concen- ous devotion to icons, the be seen, or even richly trator and joined the museum staff in 2010, story goes, and he held enameled and bejeweled, is impressed by the icons’ elaborate forms. it while praying to be healed before the like the museum’s two-inch-square depic- But she is also drawn to their universal Mother of God icon. He soon fell asleep, tion of Saint George slaying the dragon. themes, what they reveal about the pow- and when he awoke, his hand was reat- Typical for the art form is the palette lim- er of visual language and how art is used tached, unscathed. In gratitude, he added ited to lush reds, blues, greens, and yel- throughout religious traditions. “There are a hand wrought from silver to the icon, lows—with spots of gold. so many ways to approach this artwork,” CURIOSITIES: Pretty Daggers Curator Steven A. LeBlanc has picked out the Peabody Mu- seum’s most beautiful instruments of pain. Some 150 of these knives, daggers, swords, guns, maces, shields, helmets, spear- throwers, and assorted clubs are now on display in Arts of War: Artistry in Weapons across Cultures. They date from more than 5,000 years ago to the twentieth century, and represent every continent. The new exhibit (on view through October 2017) graduated series of shark teeth, laced on with twined coconut draws no absolute distinction between art objects, LeBlanc fibers tightly woven into intricate patterns. The ivory base of notes, and those designed purely to maim or kill: a Persian dagger sports carved human figures, while a Balinese most are clearly both. “War in the past was much blade’s golden haft is studded with a star sapphire and rubies. more pervasive and deadly than people realize,” Someone with taste certainly chose the dark gray stone with the archaeologist adds, “and yet any of the evi- handsome natural striping that was honed and polished into a dence we have of weapons used throughout his- flat club used by the Maori people. “It’s so elegantly curved, tory shows that they were decorated.” so carefully made,” LeBlanc notes. “Would you think that it A wooden sword from a Kiribati warrior in the was a weapon?” It’s clear, he continues, mentioning the nose Pacific Islands is rendered more lethal with its art on military planes flown by both sides in World War II, OGY L Clockwise from top: A Nisga’a club is armed with that people anywhere will decorate their weapons if given the whale teeth (British Columbia); faces appear on chance, “which is rather counterintuitive.” part of an iron axe (Zaire); and a horse graces But is it? A club bludgeons an enemy, thereby keeping its OGY & ETHNOOGY the hilt of a knife (India or Iran). wielder alive. Why wouldn’t a warrior personalize or imbue L HAEO with protective spirits any armament? How could a weapon C taken into bloody battles not act in some sense as a talisman? And wouldn’t a soldier want to differentiate his or her weapon from others—if only for practicality? “The exhibit does not pose theories about Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology why,” LeBlanc as- Nov. 6, “Beautiful and Deadly: The Arts of serts. “It asks you to War,” lecture by Steven A. LeBlanc think about it.” www.peabody.harvard.edu OURTESY OF THE PEABODY MUSEUM OF AR C Harvard Magazine 16i Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 HARVARD SQUARED Siberia Imagined and Reimagined captures the rawness of wild and urban landscapes, as well as the daily flow of human life in a remote region. real institution.” The museum itself has also grown over the years. “We find that once people get over their apprehension and initial reac- 20 minutes of the museum, she tions of ‘I’m not Russian, what is the ap- reports, are the Wachusett Res- peal of icons?’ and get through the door, ervoir (which offers local history they are completely amazed by the build- lessons and walking and hiking ing and the collection,” Young says. “And trails), the Tower Hill Botanic the museum strives to make icons acces- she says. “These icons open different doors Garden, Fruitlands Museum, the sible. You don’t need any background in for different visitors.” The museum re- Worcester Art Museum, “and the Older Russian art or history or religion, you just ceives a steady stream of church groups, Timer Restaurant. It’s an Irish pub and a need an interest in learning.” seminary students, priests, and scholars. Yet most of the visitors to Clinton, about 15 miles northeast of Worcester, are not ALL IN A daY: Orthodox believers, Young reports; they are intrigued by the story of the museum’s Growing Pains founding. Lankton moved to the area in the 1960s In the rear of the Hydrophyte House is a and ultimately became president of Nypro, worn wooden bench where visitors may sit and an international plastics injection mold- listen to the burbling of a frog-shaped fountain ing company headquartered in Clinton, and the erratic hissing of old pipes. Tropical building it into a global manufacturer. He pitcher plants hanging from baskets above in- knew little about icons when, while trav- gest stray bugs, vines roam the walls, and stalks eling for work in 1989, he bought one at a of sugar cane grow thick in one corner. Taking Russian flea market. When his collection in the greenery and warm, moist air makes it numbered around 100, he bought a former possible to forgive the frigid winds swirling madly beyond the glass.
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