The Old and the New, Without False Reverence
An exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich explores the encounter between medieval objects and modern artworks, revealing new perspectives on the discipline, transmission, and aging of religious artworks.
The exhibition *Living by the Rule: Contemporary Meets Medieval, on view through October 4, 2026, at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, takes on a challenge rarely pulled off with such brilliance: creating a dialogue between medieval monastic objects and contemporary creations, without reducing them to mere curiosities. Curated by Jessica Barker and Ed Krčma, the exhibition explores the rules that structure life, whether liturgical, domestic, or aesthetic. The museum does not seek here to juxtapose eras for the sake of easy contrast, but rather offers a subtle exploration of forms of discipline, practice, and transmission.
The exhibition is structured around targeted comparisons—sometimes unsettling, but always meaningful. Thus, Canterbury mazères are displayed alongside a woodcut by Andrea Büttner and a drawing by Vivienne Koorland depicting the Seder during the apartheid era. Tapestries by Susan Morris—which have acted as true captors of ambient light over the course of several years—face a rare 15th-century volvelle preserved in Verona. The exhibition elegantly suggests that the measurement of time, ritual, and the body spans the centuries with a quiet, almost stoic persistence.
Hildesheim: Repair as a Critical Act
Among the visual highlights presented by *Art and Theology*, the Great Golden Virgin of Hildesheim occupies a prominent place. Housed at the Dommuseum, this lindenwood sculpture covered in gold leaf, dated to around 1010–1015, ranks among the oldest three-dimensional works of the medieval Latin world. In 2013, South Tyrolean artist Walter Moroder designed new heads for the Virgin and Child, which were officially unveiled in 2014.
This approach marks a radical departure from traditional restoration. Walter Moroder did not seek to erase the passage of time, but rather to enhance its traces. The intervention preserves the work’s spiritual authority while reminding us that cultural heritage is not a static monolith. It pulsates and endures through additions, reinterpretations, and bold formal innovations. The Dommuseum has also dedicated an exhibition to this piece, *Oh my Gold!*, while a Moroder retrospective in 2018–2019 had already repositioned these contemporary additions at the heart of his own artistic practice.
Sacred Architecture: A Setting for a Dialogue Across Time
In Strasbourg, the “Stained-Glass Window of a Hundred Faces,” created by Véronique Ellena and Pierre-Alain Parot, follows a different dynamic: that of creating a sacred image through the lens of resolutely modern techniques. Commissioned to celebrate the millennium of the cathedral’s founding, this stained-glass window was unveiled in 2015 in the Chapel of St. Catherine. Created using a digital ceramic print on glass, then covered with a second layer of blown glass, the work reveals the face of Christ formed by a multitude of visitors’ portraits. The icon thus allows itself to be permeated by the community, anchoring the spiritual in the present.
This dialectic between the individual and the collective also resonates in Liverpool, where the Anglican Cathedral has been hosting temporary installations in conjunction with the Contemporary Art Biennial since 1999. The podcast *Exhibiting Faith* highlights several masterful works integrated into this space, including *The Welcoming Christ* by Elisabeth Frink and a monumental textile installation by Maria Loizidou, scheduled for 2025. Here, religious architecture rejects the role of passive backdrop: it imposes its monumentality, its silences, its perspectives, and its own physical resistances.
Creating for Eternity: The Challenge of Sacred Space
The video series *Contemporary Artists and the Sacred Space: Conversations in London*, produced by the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts and Art + Christianity, confirms that religious commissions remain an exercise of the utmost rigor. The interviews with Shirazeh Houshiary, Christopher Le Brun, Graeme Mortimer, Evelyn, and Victoria Rance highlight just how much a work created for worship must engage with liturgy, collective devotion, and the spirit of the place. The creative process thus becomes as fundamental as the finished work itself.
It is precisely here that the strength of this temporal dialogue lies: contemporary sacred art breaks free from mere ornamentation to become a true test of truth. It gauges a work’s ability to withstand constraint, the repetition of ritual, and the patina of time. In contrast to a society often obsessed with immediacy, these projects remind us that a stained-glass window, a sculpture, or an ecclesiastical installation must, above all, learn to age. Time remains, ultimately, the most uncompromising of guardians.