| |
Academic Cosmos
March/April 2007
photograph ©Mark Ostow
Ten years ago, art restoration
experts from John Canning and Co., Ltd., scraped decades of grime, grease, and
soot off the ceiling of the Common Room in the Hall of Graduate Studies. The
Byzantine-style paintings they uncovered had been executed in the early 1930s
by muralist Alfred E. Floegel, working under the direction of HGS architect
James Gamble Rogers '89. Floegel had painted each "star" of the school's
academic firmament; there were 31 departments at the time.
Historian Amy Kurtz '00MPhil says
the paintings on the beam visible above represent religion and philosophy, with
images such as a papal crown, Atlas, the lamb of God, and a Roman philosopher.
Rogers was inspired, Kurtz explains, by the ceiling of the Chiaramonte Palace
in Palermo, Sicily, a "condensed medieval encyclopedia" adorned with scenes
from the Bible, literature, and history. But Rogers and Floegel had more modest
aims. They weren't trying to build a reference work -- just a congenial
place for interdisciplinary conversations. |
|
