The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is enormous. It is easily
the size of two Wal-Marts, stretching four blocks on Manhattan’s Upper East
Side, backing onto Central Park. The collection housed in its endless galleries
is extraordinary – paintings, sculpture, jewelry, tapestries, media of all
kinds, works of art spanning thousands of years from the ancient to the contemporary.
I immersed myself in this extraordinary collection for three days during
my recent Study Leave. I had planned my trip to focus on art with, not
surprisingly, a religious theme: devotional artwork, art created to tell
stories from the Bible, decorate churches, or simply to glorify God.
It is hard for us to imagine a world in which most people did not know how
to read, only the clergy had access to the Bible, and books were exceedingly
rare and precious, composed and created entirely by hand. It was this world
that spawned many magnificent works of art.
Paintings of Jesus abound, telling of his birth, his ministry, his
betrayal, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Artists painted on boards and
canvas, created works on tapestries, and sculpture in marble, wood, and other
stone. Artisans worked with precious metals to create altarpieces, reliquaries,
and other pieces used in worship.
The galleries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art can overwhelm with their
size and their scope, but my focus on this trip was limited to a specific time
period and specific art. Still, I did walk through galleries with paintings by
familiar names: Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and
others. They too, though, often found inspiration in stories from the Bible.
I also visited the Morgan Museum, which has one of the world’s finest
collections of Reformation-era Bibles, as well as Bibles created even before
the invention of the printing press in 1450. Did you know, by the way, that we have
a Gutenberg Bible right in our own backyard, at the Library of Congress, on
display in the main hall?
I stumbled upon an interesting exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center in
midtown Manhattan, which featured artwork from the earliest years of
Christianity. It was fascinating to see the evolution of the image of the cross
from a fiercesome executioner’s tool to a devotional totem carved into
tombstones or worn as jewelry.
Even as we look to the end of another school year and celebrate with our
newest group of excited graduates, my time in New York was a wonderful reminder
that our learning never ends. And my exploration through the many different
galleries also reminded me that there is no limit on the ways in which we can
express our devotion and our faith in the One who created beauty – and called
it good, very good!
Grace & peace,
Pastor Skip
