CLINTON, MA—September 19, 2024—This fall, the Icon Museum and Study Center (IM+SC) will present Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image, an exploration of the revolutionary impact of print technology on the production and distribution of Orthodox icons. From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, printing transformed the way people interacted with and experienced sacred images. The exhibition, led by the Museum’s new Curator, Justin Willson, will showcase works from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Russia that illuminate how Western techniques transformed icon painting. Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image opens on October 18, 2024, and runs through March 30, 2025.

Greeks and Slavs used a variety of techniques to print icons, including tracing, woodblock, engraving, lithography, and tintype, each with its unique style. Many master printers embraced one or more of these methods, while others rejected icon printing of any kind as disrespectful of spiritual imagery. As production costs decreased, printed icons proliferated, spilling out of the church and beyond the monastery walls into the streets and households. Icons seemed ubiquitous and all-powerful, yet this very success unnerved some religious leaders. In their eyes, printing profaned and cheapened the icon, making it indistinguishable from an ordinary image.

According to Simon Morsink, Executive Director at the Icon Museum and Study Center, the exhibition’s focus on this rarely explored part of icon history is “an opportunity to see how painters and printers of the era influenced each other. It is an invitation and a challenge to visitors to consider the nature of the sacred image—its production and reproduction—from a new point of view.”

Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image investigates how painters produced prints of old icons, blending Byzantine models with classical and Baroque elements from European workshops. Orthodox icon painting workshops collaborated with printers in Vienna, Lviv, and Kyiv, where Baroque stylistic forms gained prominence, complementing the austerity of Byzantine imagery with a vision of the world from Western European eyes.

“Icon painting in the eighteenth century reveals just how much painters learned from the new methods of printing, whereas book printers looked to icons for inspiration,” said Justin Willson, Curator at the Icon Museum and Study Center. “It was a complex world, with no parallel in earlier centuries, yet much about the ties between printers and painters remains little known.”

Three areas of focus will highlight the materials and processes of printing, prints based on tracings of icons, and the relationship between printed books and loose-leaf icon sheets in an increasingly mechanized culture of image making.
This exhibit is supported in part by the International Center of Medieval Art and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The Icon Museum and Study Center is grateful for the participation of Hilandar Research Library, The Mead Art Museum, the Russian History Museum, Princeton University Library, Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, and Wheaton College.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the IM+SC will hold “Print Week,” a week-long schedule of activities and workshops, to bring the most accessible, novel and challenging, and practical themes of the exhibition to a wide audience. The activities will include an onsite study day, a printmaking workshop for fine arts undergraduates, a public lecture by print scholar Waldemar Deluga and specialized gallery tours, and a free family day with a workshop for young printmakers.

Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image offers a fresh perspective on the intersection of art, technology, and religion. By examining the materials, processes, and cultural contexts surrounding the production and dissemination of printed icons, the exhibition sheds light on the complex relationship between tradition and innovation. It invites us to consider the enduring power of religious imagery and the ways in which it has been adapted and transformed over time.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Justin Willson received his PhD from the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University in 2021. He held the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Art History Leadership at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University for 2022-24. His first book, The Moods of Early Russian Art, investigates the interpretation of artistic style, iconography, and cult icons in fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Muscovy. He is editing volume four in the series “Sources in Byzantine Art History,” entitled The Visual Culture of Late Byzantium and the Early Modern Orthodox World, c.1350-c.1669 (Cambridge University Press, 2028).

ABOUT THE ICON MUSEUM AND STUDY CENTER

The Icon Museum and Study Center holds the most comprehensive collection of icons and Eastern Christian art in the U.S. with special galleries and collections dedicated to Russian, Greek, Veneto-Cretan and Ethiopian icons, spanning nearly two thousand years of art. The Museum’s exhibitions and programs offer a compelling blend of history, spirituality, and culture, all within a serene, contemplative space.

Housed in a beautifully restored historic building in a picturesque New England mill town, the Icon Museum features five galleries, a research library, and an auditorium. The Study Center connects scholars, academic institutions, and museums around the globe through its lecture series, conferences, workshops, and internships.

VISIT THE MUSEUM:
Thursday – Sunday, 10 AM – 4 PM. The Museum is closed Monday – Wednesday.
Admission: Adults $15, seniors (65+) $12, Students (with ID) FREE, Children and Youth (0-17) FREE.

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