Drawn from the Smart Museum of Art’s holdings, this exhibition looked at key moments in this thousand-year transformation of use and meaning. The trajectory of this appropriation is complex, and nineteenth-century paintings, sculptures, graphic works, and decorative objects, as well as imagery in the new medium of photography, frequently placed this hallowed past in the service of modern artistic, social, and nationalist ideologies.
A highlight of the exhibition was the decorative pieces from the Smart’s important group of Celtic Revival metalwork, originally shown at one of the two Irish pavilions at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.