BAYEUX TAPESTRY FOCUS OF LECTURE AT ALLENTOWN MUSEUM MARCH 22

AVV 12-21 #681993

ALLENTOWN, PENN. — Yale University Professor R. Howard Bloch will present a lecture on the Bayeux Tapestry on March 22 from 7 to 8 pm at the Allentown Art Museum.

Attendees will travel back nearly 1,000 years to explore the history, making and meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry, a 230-foot embroidered account of the events leading to the Norman Conquest of 1066 and arguably the world’s most famous textile.

Bloch will share the tapestry’s stories of how it barely survived the French Revolution, was used by Napoleon, and studied and almost stolen by Hitler. His lecture will reveal how the Bayeux Tapestry was sewn in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings; how its images contribute to the knitting together of England out of the various threads of Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Scandinavian culture; and even point in the direction of the First Crusade and further conquest in the Middle East.

Bloch is the Sterling Professor of French and director of the division of humanities at Yale University. He is a recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, a James Russell Lowell Award, and the Medal of the Collège de France, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He will sign copies of his book, A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Meaning and Making of the Bayeux Tapestry, following the lecture. A limited number of books will be available for purchase in the museum store.

The Allentown Art Museum is at 31 North Fifth Street. For more information, www.allentownartmuseum.org, or 610-432-4333, extension 10.