Getty Museum curator Kristen Collins knew the 2006 exhibition Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai was truly exceptional when she received a lock of hair in the mail with a note asking her to pass it on to one of the Sinai monks to lay upon the relics of St. Catherine.
And when security staff had been trained to expect, and gently prevent, visitors from trying to kiss the icons—paintings that depict Biblical stories and saints—which had traveled from their remote home in the shadow of Mount Sinai in Egypt, where Moses is said to have encountered God.
And when people made the sign of the cross, kissed their fingers, and bowed in reverence as they entered the galleries, which had the low lights and sounds of chants and hymns that evoked a place of worship.
After all, the icons from Sinai were not just spectacular gilded images on wooden panels dating from the sixth century—some of the oldest surviving examples from the Byzantine world—they were affirmations of faith, a divine presence taking on a tangible, visible form.
In their remote location in Sinai they had survived the period of iconoclasm in the 700s and 800s, when religious symbols were destroyed by skeptics who opposed the veneration of images. While icons were smashed or painted over across more well-traveled regions of Byzantium, Sinai’s stayed safe.
For Orthodox Christians they were, in a sense, “a window to heaven,” said the Very Reverend John S. Bakas, dean of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in the Byzantine-Latino Quarter of Los Angeles. “The presence of those portrayed becomes manifested. Believers see them as points of contact with the divine.”
And now the icons had come to Los Angeles, creating for most Angelenos the first—and likely the only—opportunity to see them in person. Churches across the western U.S. organized bus trips to see them; believers came from all over the world.
“This show had a chemistry, an energy that I’d never seen before,” said Collins. “We put the icons on display, but it was the visitors who activated the exhibition.” Justin Sinaites, an American monk who was the newly elected librarian at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, traveled with the icons from his quiet retreat and was greeted with almost the same enthusiasm as the icons. “In the Los Angeles Times they referred to me as a rock star,” he marveled.
For him, it was important to show the icons in their cultural context. “These were created as objects of devotion, and we had to support people who wanted to approach them at that level,” he said. Getty exhibition designers created a meditative space, and programming highlighted the icons’ spiritual power.
The exhibition's opening featured an ecumenical array of religious leaders. “The secular spaces of the Getty were activated, even sanctified by ceremony,” said Collins. “It was a testament to the role of imagery in religious practice. I found it powerful and beautiful to see people connect in ways that went beyond the aesthetic.”
Father Bakas wasn’t surprised by the intensity of the response to the icons. “They take us outside our narrow, ego-centered personalities,” he said. “They’re reminders of the genius of the artist and what the painting means to them.” Rob Nelson, the exhibition's co-curator and Yale professor, wrote that “icons are doors, gates, windows into another world…places where the divine enters the space of the beholder.”
The icons’ presence in Los Angeles corresponded with the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, which celebrates the victory over iconoclasm. Father Bakas helped organize busloads of the faithful and led a procession of clergy and worshippers through the Getty Center. “It was inspirational to people who in this day and age need to be inspired,” he said.
When Father Justin returned to St. Catherine’s after the exhibition, he saw a rise in the number of visitors who came after seeing the icons in Los Angeles. He considers the exhibition catalog (co-edited by Nelson) to be a lasting contribution to the field. He continues to travel the world talking about the icons, and he and Collins are still friends and colleagues, in a relationship that spans continents, and, in a way, centuries.
“That show changed the way I worked,” said Collins. “It showed the power of an exhibition when you tap into something that your community cares about. I was trained as an academic and I immersed myself in the scholarship. I didn’t want to approach the work from a perspective of belief. But part of what drew me to medieval art was its functionality. Until Sinai that was in the theoretical past. Sinai made me see it and feel it in the present.”
