Upcoming EVENTS
Writing the Light: Study Iconography with Dr George Kordis
Dr George Kordis, renowned iconographer and former artist-in-residence at the Institute of Sacred Arts (ISA) at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS), is launching a unique two-year program in iconography as part of his Writing the Light School of Iconography. This program will feature an annual residency at St Vladimir’s Seminary, as part of its relationship with the Institute of Sacred Arts.
Students of St Vladimir’s Seminary are invited to participate in this program concurrently with their studies and will receive a 20% discount on their tuition in the iconography program. Students will immerse themselves in creating icons in the Byzantine tradition through a hybrid of online learning and individualized residencies in the United States and Greece that emphasize the intersection of artistic process and critical understanding. Read more about the program and find out how to participate at writingthelight.com
Past EVENTS
Summer music institute: Music in the Service of Liturgy
Nearly eighty people from across the United States and Canada—and one from Norway—sang, learned, and worshipped together at this year’s Summer Music Institute, held at St. Vladimir’s Seminary June 14–18. About half of the participants took part in person on campus, with the others joining workshops, lectures, and chapel services online.
The hybrid event, with its theme of “Music in the Service of Liturgy,” was co-hosted by the Seminary’s Institute of Sacred Arts (ISA) and the International Society for Orthodox Church Music (ISOCM). Additionally, music faculty from St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary—Benedict Sheehan and Talia Maria Sheehan—were also instrumental in putting on this year’s Summer Music Institute.
“The spirit of collaboration contributed immensely to the great joy we all felt during this event,” said ISA Director Dr. Peter Bouteneff. “And significantly, some of the real movers and shakers of Orthodox church music in America over the past decades participated in the Summer Music Institute along with younger musicians in their twenties and thirties.”
Academic Roundtable:
Tradition & Innovation in the Arts of the Orthodox Church
On March 17, 2022, the Institute of Sacred Arts hosted several distinguished scholars and artists to reflect together on the theme, “Tradition and Innovation in the Arts of the Orthodox Church.” This event, conceived and led by Dr. Rossitza Schroeder (associate professor of art history), was inspired by the residency of iconographer Dr. George Kordis, whose art and writings directly address themes surrounding creativity, tradition, and innovation.
Papers represented a broad temporal and geographical span—from the ninth to the twenty-first century, and from Novgorod and Constantinople to New York. The topics ranged from issues of iconographic novelties and creative solutions in Byzantine psalters, the interpretation of innovation and tradition in Orthodox musical practices, the flourishing of individual artistic styles in the peripheries of the Orthodox commonwealth, contemporary architectural church building, and the effects of digitization on the liturgy.
Summer music institute: Unity in the CHurch through song
Around 120 participants and fourteen instructors and speakers came together this June for “Unity in the Church through Song,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary’s Summer Music Institute. The online event, hosted by the Institute of Sacred Arts, was held June 2–5, 2021.
The Summer Music Institute—building on the legacy of the Seminary’s Summer Liturgical Institutes of years past—was designed for experienced musicians and beginners alike. It featured master classes and “boot camp” sessions for conducting, composing, and singing; panel discussions; presentations; and keynote lectures. Following the theme of “Unity in the Church through Song,” the conference highlighted Slavic, Byzantine, Coptic, and Georgian liturgical musical traditions.
The distinguished and diverse lineup of instructors for the event included Anthony J. Maglione, Tynan Davis, Benedict Sheehan, Talia Maria Sheehan, John A. Graham, Dr. Vladimir Morosan, John Michael Boyer, Daniel Girgis (SVOTS Class of 2021), Dr. Nicholas Reeves, and Juliana Woodill.
Pan-Orthodox Music Symposium: Music As Liturgy
The 2020 Pan-Orthodox music symposium, co-hosted by SVS (www.svots.edu) and the International Society for Orthodox Church Music (www.isocm.com) took place entirely online, June 11–13, 2020.
The event explored the theme of “Music as Liturgy,” with masterclasses, keynote presentations, and workshops. The event was designed for choir directors, singers, chanters, composers, musicologists, church school teachers, clergy, youth leaders, readers, and those interested in developing their liturgical music skill sets.
“What’s unique about this gathering, among the many other church-music events, is the range of offerings,” said Peter Bouteneff, PhD, Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. “I can hardly think of anyone involved in church music at any level or from any chant tradition who did not gain from our time together.”
BYZANTINE MATERIALITY CONFERENCE
Popular descriptions of Byzantium often emphasize the mystical and immaterial while overlooking the mediating role of matter implied by the Christian belief in the incarnation. At the same time, scholars have historically prioritized questions of form, iconography, and meaning in their study of Byzantine art and architecture. But as technology makes the human experience ever more digital and effectively immaterial, scholars across numerous disciplines—including Byzantine studies—have begun reconsidering the significance of matter and materiality.
“Byzantine Materiality” is a two-part interdisciplinary event of the Sacred Arts Initiative at St. Vladimir’s Seminary that explores matter, materials, and materiality in Byzantine art and culture. It aims to examine material strategies of objects, makers, and users; the agency and affective properties of materials and objects in sacred, political, and other social contexts; Byzantine depictions and descriptions of matter in images and texts (including poetry and hymnography, rhetoric, theology, etc.); and sensual/embodied experiences of the sacred.
BYZANTINE MATERIALITy workshop
Eleven conference speakers gathered on the campus of St. Vladimir’s Seminary from September 14–16, 2018 to explore the theme of “Byzantine materiality” in preparation for the public “Byzantine Materiality” conference to be held May 8–11, 2019. Topics of discussion included Byzantine and ancient theories of matter and form; the use and significance of materials such as wood, stone, gold, and glass in ecclesiastical and other contexts; the roles of matter and materials in the Eucharist, icons, relics, and reliquaries; the rite for consecrating a church; sensory experiences of liturgy; and the neuroscience of viewing icons.
RETHINKING SACRED ARTS SYMPOSIUM 2018
A group of renowned scholars and artists took part in a three-day symposium during the weekend of May 4–6, 2018 at St. Vladimir’s Seminary as they worked to explore sacred arts both in historic and new, possibly groundbreaking ways.
The symposium builds on an earlier meeting at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in 2016 and continues the efforts of the seminary’s Sacred Arts Initiative (SAI), which is funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff, the seminary’s professor of Systematic Theology and director of the SAI, coordinated the symposium, along with Dn. Evan Freeman, seminary alumnus and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, and Richard Schneider, professor of Iconology and Hermeneutics at the seminary.
KRISTA TIPPETT: SACRED ARTS AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Krista Tippett, host of “On Being”—a Peabody Award winning radio show that explores some of humanity’s oldest philosophical questions—presented a faculty seminar and public lecture on our campus on May 25, 2017. Funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, these events were arranged by Professor Peter C. Bouteneff, director of the Sacred Arts Initiative at St. Vladimir’s, in an effort to explore ways to engage the wider culture in conversations about faith and spirituality.
ARVO PÄRT: SOUNDING THE SACRED CONFERENCE
The music of Estonian composer and Orthodox Christian Arvo Pärt—considered “spiritually powerful” by a large and widely diverse audience—provided the basis for an exploration of the relationship between sound and the sacred at an international conference in the heart of NYC’s arts scene, May 1–4, 2017. Musicologists, art historians, performance artists, experts in architectural acoustics, and renowned scholars and theologians gathered for the event, titled, “Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred,” at McNally Amphitheater on Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus.
RETHINKING SACRED ARTS SYMPOSIUM 2016
From September 16–18, 2016, the seminary invited a dozen scholars and arts practitioners to its campus in order to think together on core questions related to the sacred arts. The aim was to build networks across our institutions and disciplines, to contribute to this important field of study, and to help the seminary discern its proper role within it. Areas of discussion centered on the meaning of “sacred” and “art,” the role of theology in the study of sacred arts, the question of how and whether the various arts need to be studied in an interdisciplinary way. Invited guests included musicians, iconographers, scholars of music, visual arts, and rhetoric: