In Memoriam
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by Wilson Yates
ARTS is grateful to Professor Emeritus of Religion, Society, and the Arts (United Theological Seminary) and Editor Emeritus of ARTS Wilson Yates for contributing these memorials in honor of his two close friends and colleagues, Tom Devonshire Jones and Jane Daggett Dillenberger. Both figures were influential in the field of theology and the arts, as well as occasional contributors to this journal. These tributes remind us that we stand on the shoulders of giants whose contributions to the field of theology and the arts are truly beyond measure. |
Tom Devonshire Jones died on February 24, 2015. He was Great Britain’s major figure in the field of religion and the visual arts, and he sought tirelessly to engage the British church with the arts and to stimulate scholarly work on the relationship of Christianity to the arts. His influence extended beyond Great Britain through his outreach to scholars and clergy in Europe, Australia, and the United States. His is a rich biography for us all.
One of the major contributions of Devonshire Jones to the international community was the creation of ACE: The Arts and Christianity Enquiry, which he founded in 1991 with the support of his American collaborators, Jane Daggett Dillenberger and John Dillenberger. (Tom had met Jane at a conference in Venice in 1989 and for the remainder of their days, until Jane’s death in November of 2014, they remained close friends and colleagues.) ACE became the premier international organization in the field and a testimony to Devonshire Jone’s theological commitment to the arts and his sociological awareness that work in the arts, to be relevant and substantive, must be grounded institutionally.
Early in his career, Devonshire Jones served Anglican parishes in Portsmouth and later, for a long tenure of nineteen years, St. Mark’s Church, Hamilton Terrace, in Regents Park, London. It is here that his voice for the arts was heard in the midst of his work with major religion and arts events in the city.
He was interested in stimulating intellectual dialogue between the church and art. This was manifest in his co-authoring for the Arts Council in Great Britain the work English Cathedrals and the Visual Arts (2008), and his later editing of a new edition of Peter and Linda Murray’s Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture (2014). He served as a consultant to the exhibition “Seeing Salvation” at the National Gallery of Art, and he wrote for British theological journals and published in this country in ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. His American connections included deep friendships and continuing collegial work. This was particularly focused around ACE which met not only in the British and European settings of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, and Dresden, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg and Strasbourg, but also in the American settings of Berkeley, Minneapolis, New York City, and Boston.
Tom Devonshire Jones was a warm and gracious person with a quick wit, a keen mind, and a deep and abiding spirituality. His spirit permeated our meetings, but his blending of the practical and the intuitive also worked to our advantage. An example: at one point, problems had arisen in the planning of the New York City meeting. Since I was working with American participants, I met with him in New York ready to sit down and solve the matters at hand. He insisted—my wife Gayle and his wife Susan were with us—that we first spend time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have lunch, go the Museum of Modern Art and then return to the Harvard Club to have a long and leisurely dinner. I was a bit worried about this approach and so I asked him: “When are we going to get the work done?” He looked at me, smiled, and responded, “In due time, Wilson, but this is, after all, New York City.”
Tom Devonshire Jones made a difference in the world and we are all the richer, for he made a difference in our own lives.
One of the major contributions of Devonshire Jones to the international community was the creation of ACE: The Arts and Christianity Enquiry, which he founded in 1991 with the support of his American collaborators, Jane Daggett Dillenberger and John Dillenberger. (Tom had met Jane at a conference in Venice in 1989 and for the remainder of their days, until Jane’s death in November of 2014, they remained close friends and colleagues.) ACE became the premier international organization in the field and a testimony to Devonshire Jone’s theological commitment to the arts and his sociological awareness that work in the arts, to be relevant and substantive, must be grounded institutionally.
Early in his career, Devonshire Jones served Anglican parishes in Portsmouth and later, for a long tenure of nineteen years, St. Mark’s Church, Hamilton Terrace, in Regents Park, London. It is here that his voice for the arts was heard in the midst of his work with major religion and arts events in the city.
He was interested in stimulating intellectual dialogue between the church and art. This was manifest in his co-authoring for the Arts Council in Great Britain the work English Cathedrals and the Visual Arts (2008), and his later editing of a new edition of Peter and Linda Murray’s Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture (2014). He served as a consultant to the exhibition “Seeing Salvation” at the National Gallery of Art, and he wrote for British theological journals and published in this country in ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. His American connections included deep friendships and continuing collegial work. This was particularly focused around ACE which met not only in the British and European settings of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, and Dresden, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg and Strasbourg, but also in the American settings of Berkeley, Minneapolis, New York City, and Boston.
Tom Devonshire Jones was a warm and gracious person with a quick wit, a keen mind, and a deep and abiding spirituality. His spirit permeated our meetings, but his blending of the practical and the intuitive also worked to our advantage. An example: at one point, problems had arisen in the planning of the New York City meeting. Since I was working with American participants, I met with him in New York ready to sit down and solve the matters at hand. He insisted—my wife Gayle and his wife Susan were with us—that we first spend time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have lunch, go the Museum of Modern Art and then return to the Harvard Club to have a long and leisurely dinner. I was a bit worried about this approach and so I asked him: “When are we going to get the work done?” He looked at me, smiled, and responded, “In due time, Wilson, but this is, after all, New York City.”
Tom Devonshire Jones made a difference in the world and we are all the richer, for he made a difference in our own lives.
Jane Daggett Dillenberger died on November 11, 2014, at her home in Berkeley. It was the end of a marvelous life that touched and influenced people throughout the academy and the church. Her writings, teaching, and support of institutions in the field of religion and the arts became markers in helping shape and nurture the field, and the professional and personal help she gave to colleagues was legion. Her last book, The Religious Art of Pablo Picasso, which she wrote with John Handley, was published a few months before her death. The book is a powerful testimony to how her creative mind explored the work of a twentieth-century artist—a fitting denouement to her long and productive life.
She was born in Wisconsin in 1916, attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University, did curatorial work at the Chicago Art Institute, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, and wrote the first catalogue of the art collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She co-curated with Joshua Taylor and edited the catalogue for the exhibition, The Hand and Spirit: American Religious Art 1700 – 1900 and Perceptions of the Spirit with John Dillenberger. She would teach in theological seminaries with her first appointment at Drew School of Theology and her final appointment at The Graduate Theological Union. Her first book was Style and Content in Art, which became a mainstay for persons teaching in religion and the arts. This work was followed by Secular Art with Sacred Themes(1969), where she treated selected twentieth-century theologians. Her work, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol (1998), not unlike the Picasso study, treated an artist whose religious life and religious dimensions of his work were ignored by critics. It was a groundbreaking work. And book chapters, essays, book reviews, interviews, and articles are an extensive part of her work. She was one of the most prolific scholarly writers in the field.
Dillenberger’s work, however, also included important contributions to the development of organizations in the field. She was a founding member of ACE, the Arts and Christianity Enquiry, an international organization located in London that focused on theology, the church, and the arts; of CARE: The Center for Art, Religion, and Education at the Graduate Theological Union which was created by Doug Adams with both support and guidance from her; of ARC: Art, Religion and Culture, the New York-based group that was an early leader in the exploration of the intersections of art and religion; of SARTS: The Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies that has become a national society for the field; MOCRA: The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at St. Louis University, founded by Terence Dempsey, SJ, a former student of Jane’s, who became one of her closest friends, colleagues, and confidants; and ARTS, where she served as an early supporter, advisor, and author. The list could go on. The point is a simple one. Her institutional work was not a secondary aspect of her professional life, but a pivotal one.
Jane Dillenberger loved for her colleagues and students to come to tea at her house. We would sit in her home having sherry, cheese, and biscuits and, later, when the doctor insisted the sherry was not the order of the day, we would have tea, biscuits, and cake. Those afternoons occurred over the years and, particularly, over the past few years. They are now gone. We talked always about Barney Newman and his works on her walls. We talked about a sweep of history threaded with stories of Tillich, whom she knew when she was a young faculty member at Drew. I think that she was a person who took us all in and called us beyond who we were, called us to join her in an intimate dinner party attended by Picasso and Cezanne on one evening, and Botticelli and Piero della Francesca on another. And we laughed at how it all slipped by so quickly. Yet there were ninety-eight years of an extraordinary journey. What more could have been asked for?
She was born in Wisconsin in 1916, attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University, did curatorial work at the Chicago Art Institute, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, and wrote the first catalogue of the art collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She co-curated with Joshua Taylor and edited the catalogue for the exhibition, The Hand and Spirit: American Religious Art 1700 – 1900 and Perceptions of the Spirit with John Dillenberger. She would teach in theological seminaries with her first appointment at Drew School of Theology and her final appointment at The Graduate Theological Union. Her first book was Style and Content in Art, which became a mainstay for persons teaching in religion and the arts. This work was followed by Secular Art with Sacred Themes(1969), where she treated selected twentieth-century theologians. Her work, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol (1998), not unlike the Picasso study, treated an artist whose religious life and religious dimensions of his work were ignored by critics. It was a groundbreaking work. And book chapters, essays, book reviews, interviews, and articles are an extensive part of her work. She was one of the most prolific scholarly writers in the field.
Dillenberger’s work, however, also included important contributions to the development of organizations in the field. She was a founding member of ACE, the Arts and Christianity Enquiry, an international organization located in London that focused on theology, the church, and the arts; of CARE: The Center for Art, Religion, and Education at the Graduate Theological Union which was created by Doug Adams with both support and guidance from her; of ARC: Art, Religion and Culture, the New York-based group that was an early leader in the exploration of the intersections of art and religion; of SARTS: The Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies that has become a national society for the field; MOCRA: The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at St. Louis University, founded by Terence Dempsey, SJ, a former student of Jane’s, who became one of her closest friends, colleagues, and confidants; and ARTS, where she served as an early supporter, advisor, and author. The list could go on. The point is a simple one. Her institutional work was not a secondary aspect of her professional life, but a pivotal one.
Jane Dillenberger loved for her colleagues and students to come to tea at her house. We would sit in her home having sherry, cheese, and biscuits and, later, when the doctor insisted the sherry was not the order of the day, we would have tea, biscuits, and cake. Those afternoons occurred over the years and, particularly, over the past few years. They are now gone. We talked always about Barney Newman and his works on her walls. We talked about a sweep of history threaded with stories of Tillich, whom she knew when she was a young faculty member at Drew. I think that she was a person who took us all in and called us beyond who we were, called us to join her in an intimate dinner party attended by Picasso and Cezanne on one evening, and Botticelli and Piero della Francesca on another. And we laughed at how it all slipped by so quickly. Yet there were ninety-eight years of an extraordinary journey. What more could have been asked for?
