“Beyond the Curtain: Materiality and Devotion in Armenian Art”

Curated by Anahit Gasparyan, Beyond the Curtain: Materiality and Devotion in Armenian Art explores how Armenian religious experience has been shaped through the physical world. At the heart of the exhibition are the Mardin Altar Curtain (1766) and the Garabed Gospel (1207), which connect the exhibition’s eighteenth and nineteenth century works to the deeper traditions of medieval Armenian Christianity.

Manuscripts, crosses, reliquaries, vestments, textiles, and other sacred objects reveal how materials such as parchment, silk, metal, wood, leather, and precious stones gave physical form to faith. These objects were not simply made to be seen they were opened, carried, worn, touched, and used in ritual. Through these repeated acts, material objects became active participants in devotional life. Their weight, texture, movement, and craftsmanship shaped how individuals and communities encountered the sacred.

Beyond the Curtain invites us to look beyond religious art as an abstract expression of belief and consider faith as something crafted, handled, maintained, and renewed, a material tradition carried across generations.