Deepening the Mystery: Unexpected Treasures of Art brought 25 works from the Methodist Modern Art Collection to the Focolare Centre for Unity in Welwyn Garden City.
The exhibition focused on modern interpretations of biblical scenes connected with Lent and Easter.
Familiar stories seen through contemporary artists
Works included Jyoti Sahi’s Dalit Madonna, Richard Bavin’s The Empty Tomb and Ghislaine Howard’s The Washing of the Feet.
Rather than illustrating scripture in a uniform way, the selected artists brought different cultural and visual perspectives to familiar narratives.
The wider Methodist Modern Art Collection contains more than 50 works and includes artists such as Graham Sutherland, Elisabeth Frink and Maggi Hambling.
Art, faith and interpretation
The accompanying programme extended the exhibition through music, poetry and an ecumenical Lent course built around six of the artworks.
Images, texts, music and open-ended questions were used to encourage discussion rather than prescribe a single reading.
That approach reflected the exhibition’s central idea: religious art can reopen stories that audiences may think they already know.
Deepening the Mystery presented the collection as both an artistic and interpretive resource, showing how twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists continued to reconsider Christian imagery through personal, modern and multicultural perspectives.