ICMA NEWS...AND MORE September 2013, no. 2 Martha Easton, Editor introduced recently by Anne Harris, Editor ROM THE RESIDENT INSIDE THIS ISSUE: F P and Chair of its Editorial Board, is an ongoing work in progress, and we have not yet man- ICMA News 1 Dear fellow ICMA Members, aged to make every item fully current. Thank Obituary 5 you for your patience. ICMA Student 8 You should all, I hope, have received back in Committee early May the first of the issues of Gesta Elsewhere in this Newsletter you will read ICMA Development 8 edited by Linda Safran and Adam Cohen, and about recent and upcoming activities on many Committee published by the University of Chicago Press. fronts, such as the Programs and Lectures If it has not reached you, please contact Ryan Committee’s sponsored events and session, Calls for Papers 9 Frisinger in the ICMA office (at the recent well-attended session at Leeds Special Reports 12 [email protected]). Gesta is now organized by Matt Westerby and our Student Recent Acquisitions 16 published simultaneously in print and Committee, and the many events organized electronic form, and if you visit JSTOR you by the Development and Membership Resources and 18 will see that there is no longer a “blackout” of Opportunities Committees. The next meeting of the Board five years, and all issues of Gesta are now of Directors of ICMA will be in New York Contributors 20 available electronically. Please remember that City at 10:00 AM on Sunday, October 20, at ultimately the production of the journal relies the offices of the American Council of upon the support of you, our members, and Learned Societies, 633 3rd Avenue (between we hope that this enhanced access will be 40th and 41st Streets), 8th Floor. It has been convenient for you and, along with the many timed to roughly coincide with the symposium other benefits of membership in ICMA, merit at Columbia University, which ICMA is your continuing support. pleased to co-sponsor, in connection with the “Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim” The volume on Pennsylvania and New York exhibition that opens at the Metropolitan (not including the Metropolitan Museum of Museum on September 17. Our next ICMA Art) in the ongoing ICMA census of medieval Annual Meeting will be during the College Art sculpture in America, edited by Joan Holladay Association Annual Meeting, in Chicago, and Susan Ward, is now almost ready to go February 12 through 15, details to be settled into production, with what we hope will be in coming months. final negotiations concerning the publication ICMA Newsletter is avail- and distribution almost completed. We hope able through membership The changes in our administrative staff have to have this important volume available later and is published every been working well, thanks to Danielle Oteri, this year or early next, thanks to the hard April, August, and Decem- now our Programs Director, and to Ryan work of the editors and many others. Again, ber. Material should be Frisinger, our Operations Administrator in we depend upon the continuing support from addressed on or before New York. Danielle is now mainly involved in you, our members, to make such valuable March 15, July 15, and (continued on Page 2) projects possible. A generous grant from The November 15, by e-mail Getty Foundation was indispensable, but we to Martha Easton, news- also need to draw on our own funds to com- [email protected]. plete the project. Our Newsletter is now For inquiries about mem- CALL FOR TITLES digital, thanks especially to Martha Easton, its bership or any additional wonderful Editor, who will soon be complet- information, please con- The ICMA Newsletter is currently publishing a ing her term. I am happy to be able to an- tact Ryan Frisinger at the listing of titles of books authored or edited by nounce that her successor will be Sherry ICMA office; tel. or fax: ICMA members within a given calendar year Lindquist, and that Martha and Sherry will be (212) 928-1146; email: (not articles or book chapters). The list will working soon on the transition. The richness [email protected], appear in the December 2013 Newsletter, so of the Newsletter is due not only to Martha’s web address: please send your titles to the Newsletter efforts, but to all who send her material, so www.medievalart.org editor at [email protected] by please do keep that coming, to newsletter November 1, 2013. @medievalart.org. The new website design Martha Easton, Editor ICMA AT KALAMAZOO 2013 Eco-Critical Approaches to Medieval Art, East, and agency of this phenomenon in the landscape: the crystals are West: I (Landscapes) and II (Objects) not an imprint of branches, they possess no mimicry, but they are wondrous to pilgrims in their ability to imitate ele- "Eco-Critical Approaches to Medieval Art, East and West: I ments of the natural that have been deemed as such. The (Landscapes) and II (Objects)" were presented at Kalamazoo site is thus miraculous because it existed outside of human in May 2013 under ICMA sponsorship. They were organized intervention, but miraculous also precisely because it could by Anne F. Harris (DePauw University) and Nancy Sevcenko intervene in human lives, as stories of healing miracles pro- (Independent Scholar, ICMA Vice-President). Introductory claim; independent of humans and yet deeply involved in comments placed an emphasis on how eco-criticism invites their fate. questions of the constructions of nature, the natural, and that amorphous place we have built for ourselves: the natu- ral world, and on the ways in which medieval images mediate the category of the natural through their materiality (the very stuff that medieval images are made of hold power and meaning) and their agency (the anagogical invitation of medi- eval images to perceive beyond the material world). In doing so, medieval images activate the category of the natural, they frame the agency of nature – manufactured from the natural, they oscillate over and ultimately blur the built boundary between artifice and nature. The first set of papers was grouped around the idea of land- scape: of nature as place, of nature as a built environment, manufactured by pilgrimage, patronage, and paint and re- presented to viewers questioning their place in the world. The eco-critical exploration of landscape in literary studies has a long tradition, but is still forming in art history. What Fig. 1: Pyrolusite from Sinai (from Anastasia Drandaki's talk) is the materiality of landscape? What is the agency of a land- scape image? Landscape is not a thing the way that an object Barbara McNulty (Lebanon Valley College) spoke about a is a thing: there are entirely different dynamics of participa- “Fresco at Kaminaria: A Donor Portrait Set in the Cypriot tion and becoming for viewer and artist. Does landscape Landscape.” She explored the possibilities of interpretation signify nature and the natural, or, especially in medieval for a series of trees, signifying a landscape behind the do- Christian representation, might it not more often represent nors, from territorial signifier, to indicator of a mapping the super-natural, the divine? The three papers devoted to vision, to allegory of Paradise. This paper brought forth is- landscape set out to explore these questions. sues of signification: Does a tree a landscape make? How minimal can the representation of nature be? The question Anastasia Drandaki (Benaki Museum) discussed “Deserts, becomes how nature is signified. Discussion afterwards not- Rivers, and Mountains: Nature and Divinity in Byzantine ed the minimalism of natural representation in the fresco, Pilgrimage Art,” with a focus on the intersection of natural and its possible relation with the signifying practices of alle- forms and divine presence at the Katholikon of the monas- gory. tery at Mount Sinai. Fig. 1 depicts a bit of the stone from the site, pyrolusite, whose dendritic crystals miraculously manifested the Burning Bush itself. At stake was the material FROM THE PRESIDENT (Continued) longer-range projects and issues, such as our publications both print and digital, and our meetings of the membership and Board of Directors. Ryan is the person to contact for issues relating to membership and other information, probably the person to contact for most members. Both Danielle and Ryan still receive and respond to the old email address [email protected], but if you want to reach one or the other of them directly, please email [email protected] or [email protected]. Thanks, as always, to my fellow officers, Nancy Sevcenko, Becky Corrie, and Gerry Guest, whose support has been constant and invaluable to me over these months. Thanks to all of you, the members of ICMA! With sincere best wishes, Lawrence Nees, President 2 September 2013, no. 2 Amber McAslister (University of Pittsburgh–Greensburg) reason, here, to think of the act of assemblage, of putting prized the material experience of paint in the process of these stones into this frame, as itself a devotional act. “Painting Paradise: The Use of Terra Verde in the Chiostro Verde, Santa Maria Novella (Florence).” The Dominican Alexa K. Sand (Utah State University) brought forth monks of the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella in “Exquisite Corpses: Animal Remains, the Virgin Mary, and Florence made meaning when they made their choice to use Jesus Christ,” through a rare work [Fig. 2] whose inner terra verde to paint the Old Testament cycle of the cloister, leaves received, at one time, pliant wax upon which could the cheap and earthy pigment uniting Creation and creativi- be written prayers, and which resonates with the Hours of ty. Perception for the monastic viewer oscillated between Jeanne d’Evreux.