A robust in-person and online audience gathered on November 9, 2024, for the Index of Medieval Art conference “Unruly Iconography: Examining the Unexpected in Medieval Art.” 

There, eight speakers in a diversity of fields asked a simple question: what do we do when art doesn’t follow the rules? Challenging their listeners to rethink the often-unspoken paradigms that decide when images are canonical, exceptional, or even mistakes, they also interrogated the unspoken binaries that underlie such labels, such as tradition versus invention, canon versus exception, or center versus periphery. 

Traversing the medieval world from central Asia to Scandinavia to Sicily to Ashkenaz, their topics explored such topics as processional wall paintings in medieval Sogdiana, Hebrew paratextual marks, the problem of scribal self-portraiture, and the racialized Eroses of Byzantine caskets.  

Conference speakers included Diliana Angelova (UC Berkeley), Krisztina Ilko (University of Cambridge), Heidi Gearhart (George Mason University), Julie A. Harris (Independent Scholar, Chicago), Alexander Brey (Wellesley College), Mark H. Summers (University of Kentucky), Nicole C. Paxton (John Cabot University), and Patricia Simons (University of Melbourne and University of Michigan). 

“As medievalists, we often try to find patterns and then select and analyze what adheres to the ‘rule’ and what does not. Instead, this conference focused on ‘unruly’ iconographies,” said Ilko. "I think this theme was a fresh and thought-provoking departure point for considering different methodological approaches to how to face the unexpected in medieval art.’

A&A graduate student Allison Marino said, “For me, the highlight was how expansive--geographically, temporally, materially, methodologically--the talks were, and how well they represented the breadth of the medieval world." “Yet, at the same time, I was surprised by the many connections that emerged amongst scholars thinking about different regions or centuries,” she continued, "such as ways of thinking about space, movement, and authorship, and how generative conversations about these connections were.”

The Index conference constituted the first of two internationally linked events, the second of which will be a site-based seminar at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” in Naples, sponsored by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas, on June 12–13, 2025.  

Preceding the conference as a companion event on Friday, Nov. 8, A&A hosted a graduate workshop in Byzantine and Medieval Art. The Princeton medievalist cohort, the conference speakers, and visiting doctoral students and faculty from New York and Philadelphia (representing CUNY, the IFA, Bryn Mawr College, and the University of Pennsylvania), met to begin the conference weekend with discussion around works in Special Collections, and short presentations by the graduate students on their dissertation topics in progress. 

“It was fascinating to look at such an expansive range of material with a room full of expert researchers.” Said A&A graduate student Eddie Maza. “I spent quite a bit of time with Julie Harris looking through a Hebrew Manuscript that Princeton acquired relatively recently. Our discussion in the library extended over the course of the conference and we have been corresponding about it in the days after.”