The Oberlin Review
<< Front page Arts February 16, 2007

Tea Time Treats: Rare Manuscripts

What do you call a room in the center of the Allen Art Museum filled with a dozen or so Oberlin community residents, a handful of college students and a professor from the art department? Tuesday Tea at the Museum, of course. Tuesday Tea is an open educational event at 2:30 p.m. of the second Tuesday of each month, open to anyone who wants the opportunity to observe and discuss thought-provoking works of art. It is alternately called “Senior Tea,” as the program is also marketed toward more elderly members of the Oberlin community.

This Tuesday’s talk featured Erik Inglis, associate professor of art, who led an informative discussion about several medieval manuscripts soon to be on display in the museum.

A manuscript, as Inglis explained, is simply something that is written by hand. All of the manuscript leaves are religious texts, pages removed from books that served important functions in medieval Christian rituals. Most of the leaves he presented are illuminated, meaning that the page is ornamented with different colors, designs and even gold gilding.

Inglis engaged the audience by opening the discussion with audience ideas about the procedure of creating a manuscript, such as the priorities in page layout and how text size, margin size and the size of illuminations were determined.

The creators were possibly medieval scribes working together in a workshop.

Prior to 1200, all manuscripts were made in monasteries. During the 13th century, there was a shift from the monasteries to the workshops, along with a shift in the location of education from monastic schools to universities in cities.

I think studying art history is just another way of studying history in general. A lot can be learned by simply taking a more analytical approach. I had never enjoyed learning about history so much before that afternoon; in fact, as a fickle liberal arts student who had not explored this particular discipline before, I thought to myself that maybe art history is my long-awaited destiny.

While redirecting one’s destiny could be a massive project, I have to say that I followed the discussion closely enough to take away a handful of interesting thoughts. Inglis presented without any pretense, like a person whose mind is thoroughly enthralled by the things he studies. If you have not experienced this, it is refreshing. He stared at the manuscripts and wondered about different things with the rest of us.

The final object that Inglis presented was the Allen Art Museum’s most recent manuscript acquisition, indicating the accessibility of fine art; it is possible for the general public to own such work.

“Works of art can still be bought. They don’t just exist in museums,” Inglis said.

The story goes that after he conveyed this to students in a class last year, the students selected an item in an auction catalog from Sotheby’s in London; the Museum bid on the item and won. The new piece is a canon page from a Catholic Mass book, an image of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion that aspires to the quality of a painting in its size and the framing of the page, as Inglis explained.

After the presentation, we were invited to take a closer look at the manuscripts and to enjoy refreshments as Inglis continued speaking and answering questions from the probing audience.

I, on the other hand, had already finished my tea and eaten too many Milano cookies.

I’ll probably go back next month.   


 
 
   

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