In the spring semester of 2021, students in my course, ARHS 110 Introduction to Western Art: Ancient to Medieval, completed a series of writing assignments that culminated in the making of this website. They focused on a select number of Late Antique and Byzantine objects from the Blick-Harris Study Collection in the Department of Art History. None of these objects had been researched or published, but all could be broadly attributed (I think) to the Eastern Mediterranean, between the 4th and 12th centuries. The students' job was to uncover the clues in these objects and to offer educated interpretations about the functions and meanings of these pieces. Below is a summary of each assignment. If you would like to see full descriptions, please contact me.
Assignment 1: Description & Analysis. Students wrote a visual description and analysis of their chosen objects. All students had access to high-quality images, but those students living on campus were required to also study their objects in person. Measuring and magnifying equipment were provided.
Assignment 2: Research. For this writing assignment, students moved beyond the visual and conducted research on their objects. They were given a series of questions for them to consider (What is it? How was it used? Who would have owned it? How was it made?). Students had to become comfortable with uncertainties, unanswerable questions, ambiguities, and multiple possibilities. They were required to find comparative material, drawn from their readings and museum websites. I provided students with a bibliography with links to PDFs and websites (see below). Finding resources on their own, especially in an intro course in the middle of a pandemic, was a challenge. Outside research was not expected as the bibliography provided them with everything they would need.
Assignment 3: Applying Scholarship. This assignment came at approximately two-thirds into the semester. Up to this point, they would have read and discussed, in class, critical secondary scholarship on the various periods we had been covering in lectures (Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc). Students were asked to create a theoretical framework using one or more of the readings discussed in class and apply that framework to their own object. Students considered issues of iconography, style, identity, agency, and the senses.
Assignment 4: Catalogue Entry. For this assignment, students drew upon the work of their first three writing assignments and produced an exhibition catalogue entry on their object. They were required to include at least one comparative object and some aspect of Assignment 3. They had to consider audience and find ways to synthesize all that they had learned into a few hundred words. The draft of this catalogue entry was reviewed by me and their peers.
Assignment 5: Object Webpage. Students revised their catalogue entries and created their pages on this site.
The sources that I gathered for my students are included here. I prioritized sources that are accessible to undergraduate students, many of whom are first-years, and sources that are accessible through our library's digital resources and my personal PDF collection.
Asen Kirin, ed., Sacred Art, Secular Context: Objects of Art from the Byzantine Collection of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC (Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art, 2005).
Eunice Dauterman Maguire, Henry Maguire, and Maggie J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House (Urbana: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989). https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015017747117
Helen C. Evans and Brandie Ratliff, eds, Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th–9th Centuries (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012).
Alexander P. Kazhdan, ed, Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Gary Vikan, “Sacred Image, Sacred Power,” in Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, ed. Eva R. Hoffman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 135–146.
Anna Kartsonis, “The Responding Icon,” in Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. Linda Safran (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). 58–80.
John A. Cotsonis, Byzantine Figural Processional Crosses (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1994).
Ivan Drpić, “The Enkolpion: Object, Agency, Self,” Gesta 57 (2018): 197–224.
Anna Kartsonis, “Protection against All Evil: Function, Use and Operation of Byzantine Historiated Phylacteries,” Byzantinische Forschungen 20 (1994): 73-102.
Gary Vikan, “Art, Medicine, and Magic in Early Byzantium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984): 65–86.
Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, “Appealing to the Senses: Experiencing Adornment in the Early Medieval Eastern Mediterranean,” in Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, ed. Fiona Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 77-96.
Henry Maguire, “Garments Pleasing to God: The Significance of Domestic Textile Designs in the Early Byzantine Period,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 215-224.
Gudrun Bühl and Elizabeth Dospel Williams, eds., Catalogue of the Textiles in the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection (Washington, DC, 2019). https://www.doaks.org/resources/textiles
Gary Vikan and John Nesbitt, Security in Byzantium: Locking, Sealing, and Weighing (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1980).
Nicolas Oikonomides, Byzantine Lead Seals (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985).
Dumbarton Oaks, Online Catalogue of Byzantine Seals. https://www.doaks.org/resources/seals
Simon Bendall, Byzantine Weights (London: Lennox Gallery, 1996).
Philip Grierson, Byzantine Coinage (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1999).
Dumbarton Oaks, Online Catalogue of Byzantine Coins. https://www.doaks.org/resources/coins
Laskarina Bouras and Maria G. Parani, Lighting in Early Byzantium (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2008).
Jean Bussière, and Birgitta Lindros Wohl, Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017). http://www.getty.edu/publications/ancientlamps/
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
British Museum, London
The Blick-Harris Study Collection, housed in the Department of Art History, includes over 1,000 objects that date from antiquity to the present day. The collection was established in 2015 with a long-term loan from the estate of Boris A. Blick (1922-2005), professor of history emeritus at the University of Akron. In 2020, a bequest from David P. Harris (1925-2019) ('46), professor emeritus of linguistics at Georgetown University, doubled and diversified the collection. Most of the objects that were included in this project were part of the Harris bequest. Harris's interests were primarily in the art of Eastern Christianity, especially Byzantium and its later Orthodox traditions in Russia and Greece. One aspect of this particular project that students did not investigate is provenance. Harris kept purchase records and receipts for approximately 60% of the objects that came to Kenyon, and we are actively investigating what these records can tell us about the ways in which the dealers acquired their pieces.