Speakers 
 
Min Jung Kim 
Barbara B. Taylor Director 
Saint Louis Art Museum 
 
David Conradsen 
Grace L. Brumbaugh and Richard E. Brumbaugh Curator of Decorative Arts and Design 
Saint Louis Art Museum 

[Min]
Hello, I am Min Jung Kim, Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

I am delighted to welcome you to the audio guide for Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum. This traveling exhibition features more than 90 objects drawn from one of the finest collections of arms and armor in the United States. Through these works we will explore the history and artistry of defensive armor made in Europe from ancient Greece to today. To tell you more, I’d like to introduce David Conradsen, the Grace L. Brumbaugh and Richard E. Brumbaugh Curator of Decorative Arts and Design.

[David]
Thank you, Min. The knight in shining armor, clad in steel from head to toe, may be a familiar image from children’s stories, movies, or perhaps a museum gallery. But how did armor come into being, and why? Who made and wore armor? And why did its appearance change over time? These are some of the questions we will consider in the exhibition.

Plate armor developed during the Middle Ages, in the 1300s. Over the next 200 years the art and craft of armor making flourished in cities and towns throughout Europe, until gunpowder weapons made it obsolete in the 1500s. Even as the use of armor declined on the battlefield, it continued to be used in specialized situations, and armor remained a symbol of power and status. Body armor is used today on the modern battlefield, and historical armor continues to be a source of inspiration in the imaginary worlds of film and television.

We are thrilled to bring this exhibition to a St. Louis audience. Although the Saint Louis Art Museum has collected armor for more than a century, we have never before hosted a major exhibition on this subject. The Higgins Collection at the Worcester Art Museum is renowned for its masterworks of armor, some of which you will see in this presentation. The exhibition also gives us an opportunity to feature more than 40 rarely seen artworks from the Museum’s collection, ranging from monumental Flemish tapestries to costume, prints, paintings, and other artworks from around the world that enrich this story of armor over more than 2,000 years.

This exhibition audio guide offers commentaries from several individuals. In addition to my voice, you will be hearing from other curators, scholars, artisans, and community members.

We encourage you to experience this guide in any order you like; you may follow it in numeric order or pick and choose. Each featured object can be located by following the floorplan on this webpage or by identifying the audio icon on the object’s label in the exhibition. Whether you’re listening from home or in the Museum galleries, I hope you enjoy this audio guide and your visit to Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum.