Friends of Photography and Contemporary Art Society members are invited to a virtual talk with artist Wendy Red Star and Nadiah Rivera Fellah, associate curator of contemporary art.

Speaker: Maria Vassilaki, Professor Emerita, Byzantine Art History, University of Thessaly (Volos, Greece), and Member of the Benaki Museum Board of Trustees (Athens, Greece) 

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, associated with well-known events narrated in the Old Testament, became the ultimate locus sanctus (holy place). A fortified monastery built by the emperor Justinian in the mid-sixth century at the foot of Mount Sinai, on the site of Moses’s Burning Bush, remains intact to this day. In this lecture, Maria Vassilaki investigates how and when the Sinai landscape transformed from mere background setting into an independent composition.