"Byzantium Revisited: The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia in the Twentieth Century"

Lecture by
Dr. Helen C. Evans,
Curator for Byzantine Art,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thursday, February 9th
7pm, Michigan League,
Hussey Room

In 1944, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted a major exhibition "Arts on the Soil of Turkey."  The representations of the restoration of the mosaics in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople were the works of greatest interest in that exhibit.  The existence of the mosaics had been known from the nineteenth century.  However, as the great building had been a mosque in that period, the mosaics had not been cleaned or placed on view.  Between 1931 and 1939, they were restored. The 1944 exhibit, “Arts of the Soil of Turkey,” brought the power and exceptional quality of the images into public view. At the same time, an article in the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin addressed the historical importance of the works, which revolutionized public appreciation of the Middle Byzantine centuries. And major contemporary artists like Fernand Leger announced the role of the mosaics as an inspiration for modern art. 

This talk will explore the duality of these images: as evidence of the exceptional arts of the Byzantine Empire and as inspirations to a generation of artists and art historians nearly a thousand years after their original execution.      

Photos courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Co-sponsored by the Dr. Dimitri and Irmgard Pallas Annual Lecture in Modern Greek Studies Fund, the Modern Greek Program and the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies.