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Ida Sinkevic, associate professor of art, is organizing curator for a major exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum, which explores the multiple roles of arms and armor in the art and daily life of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
The exhibit, Knights in Shining Armor: Myth and Reality, 1450-1650, will runJan. 28 – June 3 in the museum’s Kress and Rodale galleries. It has received an excellent review in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“[The exhibit] focuses on the period from 1450-1650, when gunpowder weapons and new military technologies gradually extinguished the need for the knights in shining armor on the battlefield,” says Sinkevic. “Strangely enough, this was also the period that witnessed unsurpassed production of elaborate, richly decorated, and superbly crafted suits of armor. Armor became a symbol of status and was worn increasingly for ceremonial purposes. It was even adopted into everyday life and dress, and became prominently and frequently displayed in works of art.”
There will be over 150 objects from the time period. Arms and armor will be displayed together with paintings, prints, and textiles. The pieces are separated into four themes – Nobility and Authority; Religious Images; Performance of War; and Myth, Story, and Allegory.
“The exhibitionexamines arms and armor as technological achievements, symbols of fascination and nostalgia for the chivalric ideals of the bygone medieval era, as a means of understanding changes in moral and ethical views of human combat, and as an important source for gauging concepts of gender and class at the time,” she says.
Sinkevic has spent almost four years in preparation for the exhibition. She has brought together paintings, prints, tapestries, textiles, full suits of armor, shields, swords, and pole arms from numerous museum and private collections. These include: Allentown Art Museum, National Gallery in Washington, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Blaffer Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Reading Public Museum, and Higgins Armory.
The exhibition has work from famous artists such as Rubens, Tintoretto and Durer. According to Sinkevic, it is the first large exhibition of Old Masters, European painters of the Renaissance and Baroque period, organized by the Allentown Art Museum.
Not only should the exhibit prove to be a popular success, it will also serve as a learning experience for students in Sinkevic’s classes this semester. Specifically, she will be sharing her experiences with students in her senior seminar course, which is aptly titled, “Knights in Shining Armor.”
“Students will have an unprecedented opportunity to examine and experience real art and armor first hand, rather than look at slides as is common in art history classes,” she says.
A portion of the seminar will be dedicated to museology, the study of the inner workings of the museum. During a number of visits to the Allentown Art Museum, students will have an opportunity to talk with the members of the museum staff, including museum director, curators, and exhibition preparator.
“In addition to learning about art and armor, students will also gain practical knowledge about museum jobs as a career choice,” Sinkevic says.
This exhibit also coincides with “Amour d’ Armor: Fear, Fantasy, and Fashion in the New Age, which runs April 1–May 6 in the Williams Center for the Arts gallery. Amour d’ Armor, which will be curated by Sinkevic and Robert Mattison, Metzgar Professor of Art History, takes a look at devices meant for protection in the modern era that fuse practicality, fantasy, paranoia, and fashion.
Sinkevic is the author of The Church of St. Panteleimon at Nerezi: Architecture, Programme, Patronage, articles on Byzantine art and architecture, and has received the Lafayette A.G. Mellon Fellowship twice. A graduate of University of Belgrade, she holds an M.A. from Southern Methodist University and an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Sinkevic often involves students in her research and serves as an adviser for their own research. She has mentored Stephanie Rosman ’06, who graduated with an A.B. with majors in art and government & law; Daina White ’07 (Montvale, N.J.), an art major; Megan Vacca ’03, who graduated with an A.B. with majors in art and anthropology & sociology; and Heather Badamo ’03, who graduated with an A.B. with majors in art and anthropology & sociology, in honors, EXCEL, and independent study research.
Most recently, students from Sinkevic’s Byzantine Art course shared their research with students and faculty from institutions nationwide at the Undergraduate Conference on Medieval and Early Modern Studies held Dec. 2 at Moravian College.