Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image

The Icon Museum and Study Center, US, October 18, 2024—March 30, 2025

The exhibition curated by Dr. Justin Wilson explores the ways in which mechanised reproduction reshaped both the production and the perception of Byzantine religious imagery across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia between the seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries. The more than sixty works assembled from seven institutions and private collections demonstrate the reciprocal influence between traditional iconographic conventions and emerging forms of serialised print technology, illuminating shifts in devotional practices and patterns of regional circulation. At the same time, the introduction of Western methods of serial reproduction profoundly altered the practice of icon painting itself, prompting new aesthetic solutions, hybrid formats, and expanded audiences.

Nikodimos, Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai, 1698. Woodcut with hand coloring. The Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image Exhibition, © the Icon Museum and Study Center (https://www.iconmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/catherine-edited-scaled.jpg)