In September, St Vladimir’s Seminary (New York) hosted an unscripted workshop of a dozen scholars to think through the possibilities for a Sacred Arts Initiative within the Orthodox Church. Participants included composer Ivan Moody, iconographer George Kordis, Helen Evans (Curator of Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), as well as scholars in literature (Mary Carruthers), art history (Annemarie Weyl Carr, Vasileios Marinis), music (Margot Fassler, Peter Jefferey), philosophy (Gordon Graham) and theology (Peter Bouteneff and Richard Schneider, organizers; me). The workshop concluded with a public panel entitled ‘Rethinking Sacred Arts’.
A report about the workshop, and links to a podcast of the public panel and to a photo gallery, can be found on the Orthodox Church in America website.
Earlier this summer, I was in London for the first of two colloquia on Image as Theology organized by Casey Strine (Sheffield),Alexis Torrance (Notre Dame), and Mark McInroy (St Thomas), and bringing together Biblical scholars and theologians around questions of images functioning as theology.
At home in the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, we are starting our own ‘theological art’ initiative, TheoArtistry, spearheaded by my colleague George Corbett and involving our part-time professor Sir James MacMillan, which aims to bring together practising artists and our theologians to create, perform and curate new art. More information is available here.
Everyone is warmly invited to a podium discussion on science, poetry and theology in conversation, featuring Micheal O’Siadhail (poet), N.T. Wright (biblical scholar), Eric Priest (physicist), and Judith Wolfe (theologian).
