From Brookline to Byzantium: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsors Trip to D.C.
Icon with Archangel Michael (detail). Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens (inv. no. BXM 1353)
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On November 8, 2013, the Mary Jaharis Center sponsored an overnight trip to Washington, D.C. for Hellenic College Holy Cross students. The purpose of the trip was to tour Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections at the National Gallery of Art.
Twenty-six members of the HCHC community—a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, a few spouses, and one incredibly well composed four year old—climbed on board a coach on the morning of November 8 for a ten-hour ride, proof of their passion for exploring the arts of Byzantium and the attractions of our nation’s capital.
The next morning, November 9, the Director of the Mary Jaharis Center, Brandie Ratliff, led students though the exhibition. Among the many important works she highlighted were a first-century marble Head of Aphrodite marked with a cross, an eleventh-century silver Processional Cross, and a fifteenth-century Icon with the Dormition of Saint Saba. Ms. Ratliff stressed the rich diversity of artistic expression across the Byzantine world.
After the tour, students lingered in the gallery to discuss the exhibition with other and reexamine works that particularly caught their eye during the tour. One student was inspired to sketch a twelfth-century Double-sided Icon with the Virgin Hodegetria and the Man of Sorrows.
Just a short while later, the group reboarded the coach back to Brookline.