Design for Captain Simpkins
Memorial Window
St. John's Church, Beverly Farms, MA
Ian Justice Photography
Orin E. Skinner Annual Lecture
Transatlantic Gothic: Aspects of
Anglo-American Medievalism
An illustrated lecture by Peter Cormack F.S.A.
Monday
November 17, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Daniel
L. Marsh Chapel, Boston
University
735 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
The lecture is free and
open to
the public.
A reception to follow the lecture.
From the 1890s until the inter-war period, a group of American architects, designers and craftworkers embarked upon a richly creative exploration of the medieval tradition, thereby transforming parts of the visual culture of the USA. Although quintessentially a 'post-medieval' nation born in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, America increasingly responded to the resonance of the Middle Ages - paradoxically - at the very moment of emerging Modernism. This illustrated lecture focuses on the work of Ralph Adams Cram, Charles J. Connick and others who recognised the potential of 'Gothic' as an expressive language for modern America. In particular, it will trace the transatlantic links with the Gothic Revival and the Arts & Crafts Movement in Britain, and will briefly examine the impact in this field of the USA's involvement in the Great War.
Peter Cormack F.S.A. has curated numerous exhibitions on Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement at the William Morris Gallery, London. He has written and lectured extensively on 19th and 20th -century stained glass and was for 10 years the Co-Editor of The Journal of Stained Glass. Mr. Cormack is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; Honorary Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters and Honorary Director on the Board of the Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation.