Co-curators:
Amy Lorion, UNC-CH department of religious studies
Quincy Newell, UNC-CH department of religious studies
Carolyn H. Wood, Ackland Art Museum

Works of art exhibited in museums have been separated from their original settings and functions. Once a work enters a museum, it sheds its old life as an object of use (in worship, as an architectural support, etc.) and assumes a new life as an isolated object of visual interest. The exhibition, Mass and Masterpiece: Celebrating the Eucharist in the Renaissance and Baroque, reconnects several paintings in the Ackland's European collection with their original religious contexts - with their "old lives." The nine-month exhibition (17 September 2000 - 27 May 2001) centers on the Ackland's The Madonna and Child with Saints (ca.1490) attributed to Jacopo del Sellaio and Enthroned Madonna and Child with Saints from the workshop of Cristoforo di Bindoccio and Meo di Pero (early 15th century) to explore the original functions of altarpieces in the Renaissance and baroque, focusing in particular on the central role altarpieces played in the celebration of the Eucharist. A third painting in the Ackland's collection, The Mass of St. Gregory (ca. 1550), circle of Lucas Cranach, together with liturgical books and objects on loan from the Rare Book Collection, UNC-CH and Fr. Timothy O'Connor, Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Raleigh, helps to illuminate the meaning of the Eucharist and the manner in which it was practiced in the 15th - 17th centuries.

Mass and Masterpiece is funded by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation's Old Masters in Context Program, which supports projects that make the historical context of European art accessible to museum visitors. With the assistance of the Kress Foundation grant, the Ackland collaborated with two graduate students from the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amy Lorion and Quincy Newell, in curating the exhibition and writing the catalogue. The concept of the exhibition was developed with the assistance of Professor Peter Iver Kaufman, whose course History of the Christian Traditions (Religious Studies 27) this year considers the history of the Eucharist in the Catholic and Protestant traditions.

For their important contributions to Mass and Masterpiece and the accompanying catalogue, the Ackland wishes to thank Father Michael Clay, House of Formations Seminarians, Chapel Hill; Father John Durbin, Church of St. Thomas More, Chapel Hill; Professor Peter Iver Kaufman, department of religious studies, UNC-CH; Father Timothy O'Connor, Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, Raleigh; and the Rare Book Collection, UNC-CH.