Vision of Petra

The Nabataeans in Petra are known to have been expert in the art of trading, but they also had an eye for an art of a different kind. This art was influenced by, and drew inspiration from, the varied people with whom they were in contact.

The most enduring examples are their monuments which have been left to us as a legacy to ponder in silence and wonder.

This exhibition brings together the old and the new, melting the boundaries with a contemporary interpretation of a slice of the past seen through the European eyes of two artists who, if only for a fleeting moment, breathe life back into the colorful days of the Nabataeans.

The magic and mystery of Petra reaches down through the years and has captivated both the Dutch painter Gerti Bierenbroodspot and the British photographer Jane Taylor who have responded each in her own way. Intimately acquainted with Petra for many years, with its monuments and the archaeology that is slowly revealing its buried secrets, their deep feelings for this unique place reverberate to the echoes of the past, expressed in the variety of their works, Gerti through her paintings and graphic work and Jane through the eye of her camera.

The contemporary two-dimensional interpretations of both artists is combined here with the three-dimensional reality of some objects that we have been lucky enough to inherit from the Nabataeans, linking us today directly with the art of the past. The objects we are privileged to be able to exhibit here were mostly found in recent excavations by the American Center for Oriental Research in Petra and all are kindly lent for display by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities.