Museums and Culture

It’s been a long summer and a long time since I’ve last posted any content on my blog.  I’m so glad that school is starting, because I really become a lot more motivated under a strict and busy schedule.  This specific post is long overdue, as I visited the Morgan Library back on August 15th (the same day I went to see The Human Fruit Bowl).  I will be focusing on the Library’s current exhibit entitled Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art.

One thing that I absolutely adored about this particular show was its layout and story.  Not only was I in awe by the amount of historic text and material in the room dating back to the Middle Ages, I was also astounded by the quality and intricacy of the manuscripts themselves.  This is an art that I believe has been in decline since the arrival of the printing press, and definitely is on a sharper downturn with the digital age.  To top it all off, the curator did an amazing job of painting a picture of the history of the Eucharist through this particular medium: illustrations in medieval Book of Hours (mainly).  I learned about transubstantiation back in my European History class in high school.  The term refers to the magical transformation of wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  I also knew the basic Christian practice of receiving the host (the wafer) at the end of every mass.  What was really interesting were the depictions of this practice.  The exhibit starts off with images of Christ’s last supper and crucifixion.  It is generally in images of Christ’s last meal where artists place the symbol of the host – a round wafer.  Christ is displaying the cracker to his followers, telling them that it is/represents (beliefs differ) his body.  In images of his crucifixion, angels collect the blood that pours out of Christ’s wounds.  The blood collects in goblets or chalices very reminiscent of those used during a prayer service by the priest.  One other detail of which I never understood the symbolism is the skull at the bottom of the cross.  This skull, with blood dripping onto it from Christ’s wounds, symbolizes Adam and his sins.  It was these sins for which Christ sacrificed himself.

As I continued on throughout the exhibit, the curator laid out several examples of the Eucharist in practice.  The video above explains that the host was constantly given more importance in the Mass as time wore on.  An actual chalice and other transubstantiation paraphernalia were on display as well.

As this visit to the Morgan Library was on the same day as my theatre excursion, my mother and I were in a rush and weren’t able to finish the entire exhibit.  We were able to glimpse quickly at two Book of Hours located in the center of the room.  They immediately caught my attention due to the raunchy “cartoons” placed within the margins.  The Middle Ages weren’t known for Victorian “prudishness” and apparently it isn’t rare to see crude images depicted in illuminations.  On one of the pages, a donkey poses as a priest, and a beer jug (instead of a wine vessel) is placed on a human’s backside (rather than an altar).  From there, the images get a bit cruder, yet increasingly more humorous!  I guess I can’t be too surprised, as Shakespeare (a great Medieval playwright) includes a lot of perverse subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) hints in his work.

I guess I’ll use the previous comical illuminations as a transition point between one exhibit and another.  Let us walk out of Illuminated Faith and into Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney.  I’ll begin by saying that I have read a couple reviews about this current exhibition, and I have yet to understand what it is about, and why it is in the Morgan Library adjacent to a beautiful exhibit like Illuminated Faith.  The first thing one sees as one enters the main room of the exhibit are several display cases, all containing one or two illuminated manuscripts within.  These historic and religious pieces of art are surrounded by “sketches, photographs, clippings, and books—used to map out the narrative structure of [Barney’s] projects” (The Morgan Library).  Automatically my eye is confusedly drawn to sketches of rear-ends, photographs of human defecation, and cut-out collages of sodomy.  There was a lack of information surrounding the display cases, and there was no explanation to the sacrilegious pairing of manuscript with… what?  I don’t even know what to call the things I witnessed.  Although there were other pieces of artwork hung up around the room (some of which can be viewed by clicking on the exhibit link above), they were overshadowed by absolute rubbish.  There is crude, and there is crude.

Overall, I enjoyed my visit to the Morgan Library very much.  The building was gorgeous, and the pieces on display in the permanent collection were just as amazing as the pieces in Illuminated Faith: books documenting Renaissance dance steps, compositions by Beethoven, a Medieval English “Cook-scroll,” and letters from Jane Austen and Mozart!  I definitely must go back and view the rest.  The Morgan isn’t somewhere to be when in a rush.

Marina B. Nebro