Art history at its best is about sharpening our vision, expanding the imagination and opening up new perspectives on life. The same might be said of theology. This retreat takes the theme of ‘perspective’ as an opportunity to explore how artists from the Middle Ages to our contemporary world have visualized the world and how a change in perspective can change everything else.
The retreat will include a session looking at art together at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Debbie is Senior Lecturer (US equivalent Associate Professor) in History of Art at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She is an established specialist in 20th-century German art and the European avant-garde and is interested more widely in the rich and complex relationship between visual art and theology. She is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, Salisbury, England, where she teaches on the MA in Theology, Imagination and Culture. She has worked with ordinands on the Oxford Ministry Course at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, England, and is a contributor to the Visual Commentary on Scripture project (thevcs.org.) Outside academia, Debbie is a regular speaker in churches and at festivals and has led numerous themed retreats on art and faith in the UK: at Lee Abbey Devon, at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales, for Holy Week 2018 on Iona and at the Cathedral of the Isles on Cumbrae, Scotland. She is also the most recent speaker for the Scottish Episcopal Church’s clergy conference of her home diocese of Glasgow and Galloway and for the clergy conference of the diocese of Edinburgh.
Hi, Pastor Jeanette Larson here. I intend to register for this the last week of March. Sounds like a wonderful retreat!