The Gallery at Barrington Center for the Arts, on the campus of Gordon College, presents an exhibit and accompanying symposium titled “What Has Greenwich To Do With Jerusalem?”
Students and the public are invited to an Opening Reception 4-6:30 p.m. on Friday, January 17 and a day long Symposium on Saturday, February 1st. The exhibit closes on March 5th. Admission is free.
Featuring more than eighty artworks, antique New England 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.
The gallery is open weekdays for students, and the public is invited on Saturdays, 10 AM to 4 PM, for all those who are interested in the histories of America, religion, art, culture, books, and technological advancement.
Since the invention of mechanical clocks in 13th-century Europe, timekeeping and religion have been closely intertwined. The exhibit leads with enlargements of colorful detailed 15th-century paintings showing King Solomon repairing a large clock, the female representation of Temperance adjusting and standing amongst timekeepers and with a clock atop her head, and Botticelli’s 1480 fresco portrait of Saint Augustine in his study with a clock not invented until eleven centuries after the saint’s death.
Even before clocks in European monasteries and church towers first began sounding their bells, sandglasses and sundials were regularly employed to time sermons, guide the hours of daily observances, and summon worshippers to prayer. In the exhibit, artworks depict large public clocks in towers including prints from lanternslides showing Connecticut churches with clocks in their steeples, photographed more than a century ago and courtesy of Boston’s Congregational Library & Archives. Artistic images of smaller timepieces metaphorically represent human mortality while simultaneously pointing to eternity.
Other paintings, prints, and vintage photographs explore 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. Hand-colored photographic prints by Wallace Nutting and his early 20th-century competitors present staged views of colonial American interiors with mantel, wall-hanging, and grandfather clocks prominent within the scenes. Portraits by Mathew Brady, American’s most famous Civil War-era photographer, feature George Custer, Clara Barton, and other luminaries seated or standing with Brady’s studio prop, a “Reaper” model cast-metal mantel clock with a young lad understood as a symbol of uncounted soldiers mowed down by modern weaponry.
Longcase clocks from the 18th and 19th centuries will be ticking and ringing the hours. Their makers include Simon Willard and Moses Peck of Boston, Edward Duffield of Philadelphia, Nathaniel Mulliken II of Lexington, Ebenezer Sargent of Newbury, and Samuel Mulliken I of Bradford.
A large iron tower-clock movement, made in the mid-18th century and formerly in a Newburyport steeple, will occupy the center of the gallery.
Early European and American pocket watches will be displayed, along with a circa 1860 marine chronometer made by Boston’s William Bond & Son.
Four extremely rare books will be on view from the school’s extensive Vining Collection. A German-language Bible, published in 1743 in Germantown, Pennsylvania by Christopher Saur, is the second Bible printed in colonial North America, and the first in a European language. Sauer also was a well-known Philadelphia-area clockmaker. Also on display will be a 1611 first edition of the King James Bible, the 1596 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and a 1590 Latin edition of Thomas Harriot’s description of the New World. On loan from a private collection is a 1773 tome, with fold-out engraved plates, by France’s eminent horologist, Ferdinand Berthoud, describing his high-precision timepieces designed for use in naval navigation.
An adjacent “makerspace” gallery will present the technical and craft aspects of horology and its history. Original 1880’s design patents, watchmaking-student drawings, artistic and journalistic depictions of these crafts, and horological tools and devices will be displayed and demonstrated.
The February 1st Symposium, free and open to the public, will be in the Center’s modern Cinema Room auditorium. Four Important speakers will address the exhibit theme and join together at the day’s end for a panel discussion with audience participation. Speakers include:
Dr. Sara Schechner, recently retired Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, who will speak about Medieval cruciform sundials. She is the author of the comprehensive 2019 book, Times of our Lives: Sundials of the Adler Planetarium.
Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College, who 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; he 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.
Two co-curators created the exhibit and conference: Dr. Damon DiMauro, Gordon College Professor of French, and Bob Frishman, professional horologist and independent scholar based in Andover, Massachusetts.
Gordon College is one of New England’s top Christian colleges, located at 255 Grapevine Road in Wenham.
For more information about the exhibit and symposium, contact Professor Damon DiMauro at Damon.DiMauro@gordon.edu or (978) 867-4349, or Bob Frishman bell-time@comcast.net or 978-475-5001.