The Cligman Collection at Fontevraud Abbey: The Art of Conversation

The banks of the Loire are lined with white, tender tufa stone. All along the river and in the surrounding countryside, its pale color and rough yet soft texture unite Romanesque simplicity with Angevin Gothic flamboyance, Renaissance splendor with the elegant rigor of the Age of Enlightenment. The continuously reinvented Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud has fostered uninterrupted dialog since its founding in 1101. Here, in the necropolis of the Plantagenets, the humanist Eleanor of Aquitaine’s recumbent figure lies reading for all eternity. In Saint Benedict’s chapel, artist François Morellet (1926-2016) evoked the lighting bolt of the storm that once reached the patriarch of Western monks in his cave. Fontevraud is all this: a centuries-old abbey in dialogue with contemporary art, a Unesco World Heritage Site featuring bold evocations and uchronic connections. This regional museum housing a national collection…