Menil Collection of Religious Icons Spans Generations

CULTURE MAP
By Joseph Campana

Saint John the Baptist, Byzantium, by a painter trained in Constantinople,
early- to mid-15th century, tempera and gold leaf on wood

TEXAS - Anything can be an image, but can anything be an icon? It's one of many religious mysteries to puzzle over for the next few months at Imprinting the Divine: Byzantine and Russian Icons from the Menil Collection. The exhibition, curated by [Menil Collection] Annemarie Weyl Carr, is accompanied by a gorgeous catalogue and runs through March 18, 2012. There couldn't be a better time for Imprinting the Divine, since it offers us all a way of thinking about the extraordinary experience one has in the Byzantine Chapel. Numbered among the many riches of the Menil is one of the most nationally — and even internationally — important collections of Christian icons. The collection contains representative works from the Byzantine covering roughly twelve centuries of icon-making from Greece, Russia, and the Balkans. [link]