The exhibition will be the first of its kind devoted to the topic of Byzantine architectural representation, challenging long-held assumptions in Western art history and providing new ways of understanding Byzantine art and architecture from A.D. 300 to the early nineteenth century. Among the nearly seventy works on view will be seldom-seen objects and icons from thirty-four public and private collections in eleven countries, including the State History Museum in Erevan, Armenia; the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece; and the National Museum of Art in Bucharest, Romania.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Art Museum available at the Museum Store.
Architecture as Icon is co-organized by the Princeton University Art Museum and the European Center for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments in Thessaloniki, Greece. The curator at Princeton is Slobodan Ćurčić, professor of art and archaeology at Princeton University.