Acknowledgments

Weinryb, Ittai

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Acknowledgments

Ittai Weinryb (Editor)

Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place

~This project has been developed at the Bard Graduate Center, and it would have not been possible without the vision of its director, Susan Weber, who together with the director of the gallery, Nina Stritzler-Levine, and Dean Peter N. Miller have created a fertile ground for broad and comparative thinking on the material world. I would like to thank the lenders to...

Author

Ittai Weinryb (Editor)

PublisherBard Graduate Center

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20163

Acknowledgments

This project has been developed at the Bard Graduate Center, and it would have not been possible without the vision of its director, Susan Weber, who together with the director of the gallery, Nina Stritzler-Levine, and Dean Peter N. Miller have created a fertile ground for broad and comparative thinking on the material world. I would like to thank the lenders to the exhibition, the gallery staff, and especially my collaborators, curators Marianne Lamonaca and Caroline Hannah, and the exhibition designer David Harvey, as well as my friends and colleagues in Academic Programs for their zeal and support in realizing this project.

Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place began in April 2011 as a two-day international symposium, “Ex Voto: Votive Giving across Cultures.” The last part of the event was devoted to a conversation as to how one should approach the organization of an exhibition, one that would bring together different facets and modes of thinking on the complex topic of votive offering in different periods and cultures. Through the focus on votive objects, we concluded, the exhibition could explore the overarching themes and the tacit undercurrents found in the practice of votive giving. After the symposium, the speakers sustained the dialogue and served as a “think tank” for continued inquiry; this catalogue and the accompanying exhibition are the result of what we began in 2011. I would like to thank them all: Hannah Baader, Clara Bargellini, Diana Fane, Christiane Gruber, John Guy, Megan Holmes, Jessica Hughes, Fredrika Jacobs, Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis, Hilary K. Snow, and Christopher S. Wood. Over the years, many others have joined this virtual think tank and assisted with the research toward the exhibition and the making of this present volume: Ken Arnold, Michele Bacci, Marisa Bass, Yaélle Biro, Sheila Blair, Suzanne Preston Blier, Fatima Bercht, Horst Bredekamp, Michael Cole, David Colmenares, Shuki Ecker, Jaś Elsner, Annika Fisher, Beate Fricke, Milette Gaifman, Margaret Graves, Jeffrey Hamburger, Hans Hipp and family, Herb Kessler, Urte Krass, Aden Kumler, Linsey LaFrenier, Sean Leatherbury, Maria Loh, Mitchell B. Merback, David Morgan, Elena Mühlbauer, Richard Neer, Christina Nielson, Peter Parshall, Ulrich Pfisterer, Verity Platt, Matthias Recke, Avinoam Shalem, Nat Silver, Jennifer Sliwka, Irene Small, Jörg Trempler, Sybe Wartena, Mechtild Widrich, and Gerhard Wolf.

Over the years, in preparation for the exhibition, I have had the pleasure of teaching a number of seminars around the topic of votive giving. I would like to thank my students, Alexandra Beuscher, Michael H. Dewberry, Ana Matisse Donefer-Hickie, Alexander Ekserdjian, Andrew Goodhouse, Anne Hilker, Michael Parker, Nicole Pulichene, Kristen Racaniello, Nomi Schneck, Darienne Turner, Katherine Tycz, Patricia Urban, Alyssa Velazquez, Shuning Wang, and Meredyth Winter, for helping me think through the complexities of organizing an exhibition around the theme of votive giving. In the production of this volume, Laura Grey has shared with us her expertise in design; Carolyn Brown has provided tireless copyediting; Alexis Mucha has helped in securing images, Roberta Fineman in proofreading, and Steven Moore in indexing. I would also like to thank staff at Yale University Press for sharing with us their expertise in bringing this book to life.

This volume centers on votives and becomes an offering in itself to the potential of the study of art and the material world to bring meaning to our contemporary lives, for research to increase our understanding of global and timeless practices, and for the expertise of a wide array of scholars to broaden our horizons and bring to life erudite dreams and learned hopes—bound together in hardcover as a votive given as thanks for graces received.

Ittai Weinryb
Associate Professor
Bard Graduate Center

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