Art and stomach aches

Last weekend, I went to the New York City Bronze Age Colloquium at the New York Institute of Fine Arts. The guest speaker was Ms. Stephanie Lynn Budin, who got her Ph.D. in Archaeology  at the University of Pennsylvania. The title of her lecture was "Images of Women and Child from the Bronze Age." Images of women and children during the bronze age (4th-2nd millennium BCE) are now referred to as the Kourotrophic tradition. Her research showed that there was a profound collection of kourotrophic iconography in Egypt, but a small proliferation of this motif on mainland Greece and almost no examples of these mother-child images in Minoan (Cretan) art. Budin explored the reasons behind this lack of portrayal of something so basic and realistic in the ancient  world, claiming that the absence of kourotrophism was due to the fact that showing a mother with a child would not be an indicator of social status; women of the ancient world were more preoccupied with associating with high-status groups rather than with children. I do think it is fascinating that so few images of a mother and child exist in ancient art, but I'm not entirely convinced that, as Budin suggests, it has anything to do with social status, especially since Minoan art usually portrayed images from every day life.

The next colloquium will be held on October 14th at the New York Institute of Fine Arts at 6:30 pm, in case anybody is interested. The event is organized by a faculty member from the classics department, and anybody interested should go show their support!

I hope you are all enjoying your five day weekend!! (Unfortunately, I got food poisoning from the Moe's on 1st avenue by the dorms...so I haven't been enjoying myself too much...)

xoxo