'The Art of Love' explored notions of romantic love. The works of art were by Dutch, Flemish, French, German, and Italian artists from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. These artists engaged with ideas about love rooted in Classical Antiquity and the European Middle Ages and allowed viewers to consider the extent to which they connected with modern conceptions.
The prints in this exhibition depicted subjects including courtship, marriage, illicit relationships, allegorical ideals of love, and narratives about famous pairs like Adam and Eve and Romeo and Juliet. The exhibition suggested the widespread and enduring relevance of these subjects and ideas, as the prints were made in many parts of Europe during the course of four centuries. The exhibition organized the prints into six themes: The Bonds of Love, Rituals of Love, Forbidden Love, Abduction and Deceit, Intimacy and Atmosphere, and Passion and Worldly Love.
Professor Kathryn Starky, of UNC's Department of Germanic Languages and Literature, and the students that were in her first-year seminar, 'Love in the Middle Ages,' partnered with the Ackland to curate this exhibition. Starkey's course examined the creation and development of the notion of love from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present day. She and her students interpreted the prints from that perspective, demonstrating the ways in which these images illuminated conceptions of love prevalent in past centuries and still current in our own.