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Sacred Places, Sacred Spaces: Religious sites and structures in Europe and the U.S

Beginning with Stonehenge in England, we will examine places that western European culture has identified over the centuries as sacred sites. We will ask how these sites and the human artistic creations associated with them have come to determine or define meaning and content in the history of religious observance and worship, and how these creations attempt to connect, by visual means, what is perceived as divine with what is human. We will consider how sacred sites such as Delphi and the Athenian Acropolis functioned for ancient Greece, then look at the Byzantine imagery of St. Mark’s in Venice, the soaring Gothic arches of the cathedral at Chartres, the High-Renaissance magnificence of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the elaborately painted, twice-destroyed wooden synagogue of Gwozdziec in what is now Ukraine, the Baroque grandeur of  St. Paul’s in London, and finally Frank Lloyd Wright’s modernist Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, PA.

Instructor: Rhea Higgins

3 Tuesdays 4:00–6:00pm Oct. 7, 14, 21, Wasch Center