ABOUT Visual Theology
Exploring the spiritual imagination in visual culture
Visual Theology is a symposia for conferences, publications, events, and art commissions that explores the relationship between the spiritual imagination and visual culture. It is an independent organisation and is directed by Madeleine Emerald Thiele.
Through academic conferences and creative events, VT explores the rich tapestry of both historical and contemporary religious imagery and architecture in Europe and beyond. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, VT encourages dynamic conversations between academic specialists, curators, theologians, professional artists, and church leaders.
Exploring the value of religious imagery, particularly its place and function in the twenty-first century, VT seeks to encourage new forms of critical dialogue with a compassionate and objective eye, rather than a doctrinaire approach. VT is of relevance to those of all faiths and none. Its central tenet is to ask how sacred art and ideas of the numinous can play a transformative role in public discourse, public spaces, and public architecture. Visual Theology was co-founded in 2018 by Madeleine and Dr. Sheona Beaumont but works with a number of different people in various roles for individually curated events.
Madeleine Emerald Thiele – Director and Founder
Madeleine is a published art historian whose research examines Tractarian aesthetics, John Ruskin, Venice and the philosophy of beauty and decay, with a particular focus on British and Italian art, architecture, and culture between the 1840s–1900s. Madeleine has presented papers in the UK, Europe, Canada, and the US; she has taught at the University of Bristol, and Marlborough College, and has also written for the Victorian Web. She was also the Visual Arts Editor for the journal Harts & Minds throughout its lifespan and has two decades of teaching, public speaking, gallery tours, editing, and event organisation experience to her name. She founded Visual Theology as an academic, intellectual, spiritual place of imagination and conversation back in 2018. Through VT she has edited two books, commissioned art works, convened events, and given public talks. Her current research examines religious attitudes toward the English landscape.
Dr. Flora Armetta – Co-convenor (2024-present)
Flora Armetta is Associate Professor of English at Central Penn College. Her work on art, literature, and theology has appeared in Visual Theology’s John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination: Sacre Conversazioni and in The New Yorker, American Arts Quarterly, Victorian Studies, and Victorian Network, among other publications. She was previously Assistant Professor of Arts and Humanities at the City University of New York. She earned her Ph.D. in nineteenth-century literature at Columbia University and her B.A. in Art History at Tufts University, and she has also worked as a lecturer in the Education Departments of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters Museum and taught great-books courses at Columbia and for Classical Academic Press. Her newest project ties Victorian religious debates about the Real Presence to spirit photography, Gothic ghosts, and detective fiction.
Dr. Sheona Beaumont (2018-2023)
Sheona was a co-founder of Visual Theology back in 2018. She continues her work in the vein of VT, but working as an independent artist and writer. She remains a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London.
Banner image: Mark Dean, Station VI: The Veil of Veronica (offset Halo), 2012; video and sound projection on the Henry Moore altar, St. Stephen Walbrook, 15th April 2017. Featured in Chapter 10 of Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts © Mark Dean