Education

In art, as in life itself, things are never quite what they seem. Today we visit museums and wonder at the aesthetic splendor of a 17th-Century Dutch still-life, yet may miss the many symbols that their contemporary audience would have recognized and that transformed the work into a serious contemplation on the meaning of life. Or perhaps we gaze admiringly at a Medieval Madonna without realizing that the landscape, the objects scattered throughout the painting, and even her clothes all said something about her character and her role in Medieval society.

These are The Hidden Symbols of Art, and they reveal to us what and how the people in the times of their creation thought and felt. From archaic, esoteric vocabularies to deliberate riddles and puzzles, from deceivingly benign decorative Greek patterns to the significance of a fallen shoe in a 19th-Century American portrait, The Hidden Symbols of Art will be revealed. The key to interpreting the meanings embedded in art from ancient Egypt through the modern age will be explored in this eight-week series of lectures by Chief Curator Preston Metcalf.

• January 12:  Symbols of the Feminine
• January 19:  Symbols of Kingship and the Sun
• January 26:  Symbols of Life Beyond
• February 2:  Symbols of Life’s Journey
• February 9:  Symbols of Politics and Power
• February 16:  Symbols of Love and Marriage
• February 23:  Symbols of Demons and Gods
• March 1:  Symbols into the 20th and 21st Centuries

For more information, please call (408) 247-3754.