WashingtonWesternCiv Website
Dean, Humanities Division
and
Professor of History
Northern Virginia Community College-Loudoun Campus
Background
The Washington area abounds with examples of art, architecture, and historical artifacts, which play a central role in the history and development of Western civilization and the Western tradition. Some of these are originals, such as the National Gallery’s collection of madonnas by Raphael, Giotto, Botticelli, and others. Others are faithful adaptations, such as the neo-gothic National Cathedral and the Washington Monument obelisk, or incidental adaptations such as the ziggurat-style AOL and Comsearch buildings in the Dulles/Rte 28 corridor. Still others are playful adaptations such as the riffs on Medieval and Renaissance paintings evidenced in the interiors and on the facades of certain Northern Virginia office and commercial buildings.
Taken together, and placed in a chronological and explanatory context, these rich and plentiful resources can constitute a tour of many of the great styles, moments, and personalities of the Western tradition, and can bring students of history a personal encounter with their cultural heritage. It is the purpose of this project to collect numerous of these examples and present them in a website for use by NVCC students and faculty and the public at-large.
For most of my tenure at NVCC, which extends more than 30 years, I have been a history professor. As an administrator for the past 12+ years, I have continued to teach a course in the history of Western civilization from time to time and to work with NVCC historians toward the general improvement of all such courses. For the past few years, armed with my meager PowerPoint skills and with a disposable camera (recently replaced by a digital one), I have begun to cobble together an outline for a “Stalking the Western Tradition in the DC Area” website.
The site is comprised of approximately 20 categories. Most are historical (Prehistoric Washington—directing students to certain exhibits in the Museum of Natural History, Mesopotamian Washington—illustrating examples of ziggurat-style buildings such as the AOL corporate headquarters, Egyptian Washington--DC-area pyramids and obelisks, certain exhibits in the Freer Gallery, etc, Roman Washington—the Jefferson Memorial, the Supreme Court building, etc, Medieval Washington—Suger’s chalice in the National Gallery, Rodin’s ‘Burghers of Calais’ in the Hirshhorn sculpture garden, a local Franciscan monastery, etc); some are whimsical (large, painted-in-place scenes from the Limbourg brothers’ Tres Riches Heures in an office building lobby and Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ on the façade of a local Blinds To Go shop; still others are surveys (‘an avenue of churches’ lists the Islamic Center mosque, a Greek orthodox church, a Russian orthodox church, and the neo-gothic National Cathedral, all located along a mile of Massachusetts Avenue, and ‘a procession of Madonnas’ presents a dozen examples of the genre in the National Gallery of Art, stretching from anonymous Byzantine works through Giotto, Botticelli, Raphael, and Bellini), while ‘famous dead folks’ directs students to local statues, major paintings, and portrait busts of Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Lorenzo de’Medici, Napoleon, Gandhi, Einstein, and others).
This project owes much to Paul Halsall’s “Medieval New York” site, especially for inspiration. In assembling the site, I have profited from discussions with NVCC and George Mason University colleagues, and from the insights and recommendations of NVCC webmasters and others similarly adept at online strategies and technologies. During the Fall 2003 semester a group of honors students in my HIS 101 class and I engaged in writing the first several explanatory text panels to accompany the photos and links in the site, which still remains “under construction”. It is offered in draft form for your perusal and comment.