Roger Wieck, who has made the study of illuminated manuscripts a central focus of his career for the past 30 years, will be in Southeast Texas on Tuesday to speak on "Medieval Best Seller: The Book of Hours" for the Stark Museum of Art.
The talk is in conjunction with the exhibit "Angels in Art: Illuminated Manuscripts from the Stark Collection," which continues on display through Jan. 5. Wieck, the curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, has authored five books and numerous articles on the topic.
"I'd always had an interest in medieval art, especially medieval paintings, but in the middle of the '70s, I got to hold an illuminated manuscript in my hand and I had a sort of conversion," Wieck said. "I very much was struck by an art form that combined pictures with text and the relationship with them. An art that to truly experience, you have to encounter on a very close level."
Wieck will give an hour talk that will answer the question, "What is a book of hours?"
"It's a phrase people might have encountered on a Christmas card, but couldn't define," Wieck said. "A Book of Hours is an illustrated prayer book that was one of the first bestsellers in the modern era. It was a popular type of text for over 300 years, from the middle of the 13th century through the middle of the 16th, produced by hands in the thousands."
Wieck gave three examples of why illuminated manuscripts stand alone as an art form:
"Each illuminated manuscript is a book that has been written and painted by hand, not printed, so each truly is a unique creation." "Because they spend 99 percent of their lives closed, these books often are in pristine and beautiful condition, as opposed to a panel that may hang above an altar and be exposed to incense and smoke and air pollution that will cause the paints to fade or darken. Sometimes they are as pristine as the day they were created." "The relationship between the text and pictures: it's not always a straightforward illustration, like a children's book. Often, in these books of hours, the series of images function as another kind of text, albeit a visual text that relates to the written text - they form meditative points so that when you read the text you have things on which to meditate." 
