mount tabor ECUMENICAL CENTRE FOR ART & SPIRITUALITY

Transcription

1 mount tabor ECUMENICAL CENTRE FOR ART & SPIRITUALITY

2 mount tabor ECUMENICAL CENTRE FOR ART & SPIRITUALITY ABOUT The new Mount Tabor Centre was founded in 2013 at Barga, Italy, by the Community of Jesus, an ecumenical monastery of women, men, and families living a consecrated life on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. The new Centre offers the Community an opportunity to expand its mission, promoting the study of three central aspects of the Community s life monastic spirituality, sacred art, and ecumenical exchange at the international level and specifically in the context of Tuscany. This expanded vision of mission originated with the Community s acceptance of the proposal from the Office of Sacred Art of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy, to organize a symposium drawing on the Community s experience in building its Church of the Transfiguration on Cape Cod and decorating it with works by masters from Italy, Ireland, France, Germany, and the United States. The symposium, which took place in Florence in October 2011 ( Contemporary Sacred Art: Life Sources and Spirituality ), and the simultaneous publication of the meeting s papers in Italian (Bellezza e vita. La spiritualità nell arte contemporanea, ed. Timothy Verdon, Milan 2011) sparked further discussion with the Archdiocese of Florence, and then with that of Pisa, leading to the creation of the Mount Tabor Centre in the Tuscan city of Barga. MISSION Located in an historic house on the Barga city walls, the Mount Tabor Ecumenical Centre for Art and Spirituality aims to inspire and promote visual and performing arts, organize and support educational programs and opportunities, and facilitate ecumenical exchange. Supported by the

3 MISSION, CONTINUED Benedictine life of the Community of Jesus, the house and its gardens, now called Via Sacra, provide a context for reflection and discussion about faith and creativity, contemplation and communication, liturgy and beauty, in an atmosphere of monastic hospitality and peace. The Mount Tabor Centre also offers monastic retreats and study visits, organizes lectures and international symposia on issues and trends in the arts today, facilitates ecumenical dialogue on monastic history and spirituality in music and the arts, and presents exhibits of contemporary sacred art, choral concerts, and theatre productions. The arts come from an expression of the soul that has found itself loved; that has then worked to love and return to God the immensity of that love. The creative arts give voice, eyesight, color, wings to that response, beyond just words. M. BETTY PUGSLEY A HOUSE WITH AN IDENTITY: VIA SACRA A large 18th- and 19th-century house sits atop the medieval walls of an ancient town facing Pania della Croce, a mountain named for Jesus s Cross above the Serchio river valley; a place of silence for reading and prayer, but also of conversation and thoughtful sharing. Via Sacra is but minutes from Barga s main church or duomo, San Cristoforo, with its 800-year-old stone pulpit sculpted with Annunciation, Nativity, and Epiphany scenes: an Angel, a Woman, a Child, three Kings, and a Star. Reached by a short walk through Barga s narrow, stone-paved streets, the house and its three-story tower sit astride the town s medieval fortifications, amid terraced gardens with vistas of encircling mountains with villages on their slopes, and Barga s own weathered terracotta roofs.

4 VIA SACRA, CONTINUED A small but vibrant resident household, composed of women and men of the Community of Jesus, supports the Mount Tabor Centre, welcoming guests in a spirit of Benedictine hospitality. The artist is someone in communion with life in a deeply significant way. People turn to the artist as to a priest who enjoys this privileged communion in order to give it to others. His creativity obliges him to transmit it to others, and so we look to the artist as to a giver of spiritual life. By doing that, we acknowledge art s potential to nourish our craving for richer, deeper, more meaningful life, and we are already changed. MSGR. TIMOTHY VERDON THE COMMUNITY OF JESUS The Community of Jesus is an ecumenical monastic community in the Benedictine tradition, whose mission is to be a faithful witness to the gospel, and to glorify God through worship, common life, creative arts, and hospitality. 270 men, women, and families from a wide variety of denominational backgrounds and occupations live together in consecrated community life. At the heart of the Community s property on the shores of Cape Cod Bay stands the Church of the Transfiguration, built from as a contemporary expression of the architectural style of 4th-century Christian basilicas. The church, enriched with hand-crafted mosaic and fresco images, bronze, glass, and stone sculpture, hosts daily community worship services including Holy Eucharist, Choral Evensong, and Liturgy of the Hours sung in Gregorian chant.

5 UPCOMING PROGRAMS July 2014 Official Opening of Via Sacra/Mount Tabor Centre. Formal dinners with Church and Government Officials; Open House Reception for residents of the City at Via Sacra; Sacred Art Exhibit at Via Sacra. October 2014 Study Tour of Tuscany Exploring Secrets of Romanesque Art (Barga/ Lucca, Pisa, Sienna, Arezzo). December 2014 Study Tour of Marian Art in Washington, DC, USA in conjunction with the exhibition Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea at the National Museum of Women in Art. Spring 2015 Symposium of International Scholars and Artists for Italian, English, French, and German theological academics in Florence and at Via Sacra in Barga. November 2015 International Sacred Art Exhibit in Florence and Concert of Sacred Choral Music as part of the Italian CEI Bishop s Conference. Additional tour of choral concerts in Barga, Lucca, and Pisa.

6 ADMINISTRATION Academic Director Msgr. Timothy Verdon, an art historian with a PhD from Yale University, directs both the Diocesan Office of Sacred Art and Church Cultural Heritage in Florence and the Cathedral Foundation Museum (Museo dell Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore). The author of books and articles on sacred art in Italian and English, he has been a Consultant to the Vatican Commission for Church Cultural Heritage and a Fellow of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Currently he teaches in the Florence Program of Stanford University, and writes regularly for the cultural page of the Osservatore Romano. In 2010 he curated the exhibit Christ: His Body, His Face in Art at the Reggia di Venaria Reale at Turin. Msgr. Verdon lives in Florence, where he is Director of the Centre for Ecumenism of the Archdiocese of Florence, and a Canon of the Florence Cathedral. Artistic Coordinator Dr. Filippo Rossi has exhibited since 1994, working on themes in Christian sacred art. Since 1997, Rossi has been a visiting professor at the Florentine Study Centre of Stanford University, where he teaches courses in studio art, contemporary painting, and museology. He also collaborates with Msgr. Timothy Verdon in the Florence Archdiocesan Curia, where he is presently coordinator of the Office of Sacred Art and Church Cultural Heritage. Rossi was the youngest artist invited by Pope Benedict XVI to take part in a meeting held on November 21, 2009 in the Sistine Chapel. He was called in 2011 by the Florence Cathedral Foundation (Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore) to take part in the competition for a pulpit for the cathedral. In 2012 he accepted the invitation of the Derix Glasstudio of Frankfurt (Germany) to work with their technicians on translating several of his paintings into stained glass. His most recent solo exhibitions were at the Museum of Portiuncula in Assisi, the Misericordia of Florence, and Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. Administration M. Betty Pugsley, cj Christopher Kanaga, cj Blair Tingley, cj