Awards
2008 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
Fabio Barry, “Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages” (December 2007)
Frigidarium of the Villa of the Quintili, Rome, late second-early third century CE (photograph by Fabio Barry)
Fabio Barry’s “Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” published in the December 2007 issue of The Art Bulletin, is a beautifully written, at times even poetic, article that stands out for the breadth and depth of its research. Its wide cross-cultural and cross-chronological range and its engagement with a variety of media are impressive.
Approaching the marble floors of Hagia Sophia and other churches, east and west, not in a formalist way but instead considering them in their historical context—through the “philological, geologic, and cosmogonic associations” of their materiality—the author helps us to see the floors in an entirely new manner. This in turn enhances our understanding of these buildings as a whole and the culture that produced them, while reminding us of the long and tenacious life of certain forms of symbolism.
Jury: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University, chair; Marni Kessler, University of Kansas; Jack M. Greenstein, University of California, San Diego.
