At the start of January, PhD candidate Maggie Wilson traveled to the Netherlands and Belgium in order to visit collections related to her dissertation, “Making and Breaking Enclosure: the Movement of Art through Late Medieval Convents.” She visited major medieval collections in Amsterdam and Utrecht, with a focus on monastic visual culture from the fifteenth and early-sixteenth century. While many works of art and architecture depicting Catholic life and religious practice were lost during the Reformation in the Netherlands, surviving works give clues to the rich visual culture of monastic and Beguine communities in the late Middle Ages. Maggie also visited Belgium, where she was able to view the recently restored sculpture of Christ and John from the Swiss convent of St. Katharinenthal.

This research trip was generously supported by the Cathleen M. Murnane Travel Scholarship and the College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Research Small Grant.