Theology, Imagination and the Arts
Kathryn R. Barush is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Her doctoral thesis (University of Oxford, 2012), which she is now preparing for publication, examines the intersections of the concept of pilgrimage and the visual imagination in Britain from the years 1790 to 1850. This essay seeks to briefly introduce some of the issues that will be addressed in a longer piece on revived pilgrimages and liturgical art commissions in the U.K.
The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln (or, to most, simply Lincoln Cathedral), with its once-towering Gothic spires and pale stone,…