Summary

Memento mori, “remember that you will die,” expresses the inevitability of death. No matter how good of a life you lead, nor how famous or rich you become, death always awaits. With the dawn of Christianity in the West, the symbol of death and the afterlife became dominant in art, finding its heyday in the darkest and most demoralized parts of our past during the period of the Black Death. Memento Mori: The Art of Death and Mourning traces the thematic iconographies of death, dying, and mourning.

We invite you to explore the darker side of our collection through hallmarks of how we mourn, celebrate, deny, and ultimately accept death.

Credits:

Project Team:

Dylan Burns (Exhibit curator)

Vicki Read (Contributor)

Gaby LeBeau (Reviewer)

Randy Williams (Reviewer)

Alison Fabricius Gardner (Project coordinator for digitization)

Emily Crumpton (Digital exhibit designer)

Mikkel Skinner (Graphic designer)

Shay Larsen (Graphic designer)

Metadata/Uploading:

Emily Crumpton

Alison Fabricius Gardner

Scanning technicians: