What has Greenwich to do with Jerusalem?
An Exhibit on the Intersection of Horology and Religion

January 15, 2025-March 5, 2025
Barrington Center for the Arts
Free and Open to the Public

Curators:
Dr. Damon DiMauro, Gordon College Professor of French, and
Bob Frishman, professional horologist and independent scholar based in Andover, MA.

Opening Reception 
Friday, January 17, 2025, | 4 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Symposium
Saturday, February 1, 2025, | 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Featuring more than eighty artworks, early American clocks, and rare books, the exhibit explores eight centuries of close connections between horology—the science of timekeeping—and Christian theology. The title echoes a classic query by Christian theologian Tertullian, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ concerning the intersection of secular learning and religious culture. In the exhibit, artworks depict large public clocks in steeples and smaller timepieces metaphorically representing human mortality while simultaneously pointing to eternity. Other paintings, prints, vintage photographs, and timepieces explore the religious affiliations of clockmakers, missionary endeavors, nostalgic views of early American life and religious commitment, and the early involvement of Calvinists, Quakers, and Huguenots in clockmaking. 

On February 1st four speakers will address the exhibit theme, and join together at the day’s end for a panel discussion with audience participation. Dr. Sara Schechner, recently retired Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, will speak about Medieval cruciform sundials. Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College, will address changes in the calendar system in the Geneva of John Calvin (1509-1564). Daniel Benson is a minister, horologist, and theologian based in Toronto, will describe the famous monumental clock in France’s Strasbourg Cathedral. William J.H. Andrewes, horologist, scholar, author, designer of public sundials, and principal creator and organizer of the 1993 Longitude Symposium at Harvard University, will provide an overview of the origins of the mechanical clock in European monasteries and churches. 

Anticipation
An Art Alumni Exhibition

March 21, 2025 – April 26, 2025
Barrington Center for the Arts

Curators:
Stacey Silkey Schultz '02
Justin Kedl '18
Grace Heffner Bish '20

Artmaking is a slow process, demanding time, space, and patience. It requires both technical mastery and a willingness to experiment and often to fail. Artists learn to see deeply, becoming attuned to often-overlooked visual phenomena in the world around them. For many, being an artist is a lifelong pursuit that has seasons of conviction and seasons of doubt.  

To be an artist is to pursue understanding through embodied encounters with the world, despite the doubt. It requires faith—setting aside preconceptions, embracing discomfort, and remaining open to discovery. This isn't merely a hobby or profession, but a way of being that asks not just what things are, but why they exist. What might we discover through open-handed encounters in our shared reality and humanity about our God-given purposes? Art, at its best, is the embodied and material working out of this search for purpose and belonging. 

We invite any Gordon College art alumni to apply to our juried exhibition, opening this spring. All media forms are accepted. Size and quantity limitations can be found in the application. The deadline to apply is January 31 and selection decisions will be announced on February 14. 

Follow this link to apply.

Past Exhibitions

Marc Chagall and the Bible

Works by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
Traveling Exhibition by Sandra Bowden
October 4, 2024-December 12, 2024
*Closed early due to unforeseen circumstances. 

About the Exhibition
Marc Chagall (1877–1895) is perhaps the foremost visual interpreter of the Bible in the twentieth Century. With wit and joy, he has given us the stories that we know so well from the Old Testament. His art is filled with his own reoccurring symbols of visual memory and imagination. He said he did not see the Bible, but he dreamed it, even as a child. Chagall’s vision of the Old Testament combines his Jewish heritage and modern art giving us a rich display of symbol and imagination. 

Chagall said, “Since my early youth I have been fascinated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and it seems to me still that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time.” 

Chagall and the Bible includes 44 etchings and lithographs of Chagall’s graphic works and one signed original poster. Ten etchings from his 1960 Bible series brings together the artist’s spirituality and childhood fantasy through the sophisticated artistry of a master printmaker. Another 28 brilliantly colored images from his 1956 and 1960 suites of Bible lithographs are luminous interpretations of some of his favorite stories from the Hebrew Bible. Each is a delightful and colorful interpretation that lets the viewer enter the worlds of the Bible and Marc Chagall.  

It is most interesting that Chagall, who is Jewish, would have used the Crucifixion in so many of his works, yet over 100 of his works include the Crucifixion as a reference or the subject of his paintings. Mystical Crucifixion and Christ in the Clock, two colored lithographs in this exhibition, demonstrate his fascination with this theme.