Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages
2025Oct17(Fri)–2026Mar29(Sun)About this exhibition
Set in the stunning atmosphere of The Met Cloisters, this exhibition explores the often-overlooked themes of desire, sexuality, and gender in the medieval past, a period of time when most artistic production served religious purposes. Desire in the Middle Ages was multifaceted. It could be courtly or carnal, sacred or subversive, and expressed as a kind of longing, suffering, or joy. Medieval artists could be both deeply serious and comical in their evocations of these feelings. Drawing on decades of scholarship, Spectrum of Desire opens up new ways of seeing the past through stirring works of art that inspire us to think more expansively about people who lived in the Middle Ages, their rela
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