Exhibit - Icons of the Hellenic World - June 22 thru Oct 21, 2018

MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM TO EXHIBIT GREEK, BYZANTINE ICONS

Published in the Orthodox Observer, May - June 2018

Clinton, Mass. - The Museum of Russian Icons will present the first major exhibition on Icons of the Hellenic World from June 22 to Oct. 21.

The exhibition focuses exclusively on Greek and Byzantine iconography and will delve deeply into the links and the continuity of Greek art and culture from Late Antiquity, through Byzantium, to the present. 

"We are very grateful to Emmanuel Tiliakos for the opportunity to showcase his extraordinary collection, giving contemporary viewers a window into the richness of Greek culture and history," says Museum of Russian Icons CEO and Curator Kent Russell.  "Though icons are considered works of art, they are important cultural and religious relics.  As they are handed down through generations, icons are often the only surviving testimonies of places and peoples long gone."

Largely comprised of icons created after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Icons of the Hellenic World will also feature works from the Byzantine period (330 AD-1453).  The earliest object in the exhibition is a rare "Portrait of Man" from Fayum, Egypt, produced in the first or second century AD, and painted in the encaustic technique, a wax painting method practiced in ancient Greece that probably originated in Egypt.  Encaustic portraits are thought to be prototypes for painting the earliest Christian icons.

The exhibition features numerous icons and objects fro the Cretan School as well as pieces from the Greek Islands of the Aegean Sea, and the so-called Ionian School.  This was the art produced in the Ionian Islands by Cretan artists who took refuge on these Venetian-held islands after the fall of Crete to the Ottoman Turks in 1667.  The School of the Ionian Islands produced some famous and talented artists who provide a direct link from the art of Byzantium to modern Greece.

THE MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN ICONS
203 Union Street
Clinton, MA 01510
www.museumofrussianicons.org