The Architecture of Time Travel: Glencairn Museum

Monday, October 8, 2012

 

The Architecture of Time Travel: Glencairn Museum and Its Integrated Pasts

Dr. Jennifer Borland will explore a particular instance of early-twentieth-century American reappropriation of medieval objects on Wednesday, Oct. 10, from noon to 1 p.m. in room 104 of the Bartlett Center.  

Borland’s lecture will focus on Glencairn, a museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, that was formerly a private home, where medieval remnants and modern materials (often meant to replicate the medieval) are used to build the very fabric of the house’s spaces.

Clear distinctions between old and new are absent, creating a context that alters and destabilizes the meanings of medieval objects themselves. Such an environment, made up of fragments, both preserves cultural memories and constructs new ones, of spaces and places that never existed but seem as if they did.

Borland is assistant professor of art history at OSU, specializing in the visual culture of the Middle Ages. Her scholarship is concerned with issues of audience, corporeality, gender, space, and materiality.

Click here for more information on the series.

Photo by Jennifer Borland - Interior of Glencairn Museum