The University of Kentucky’s Art Museum will hold a launch event Friday for a new book about Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Chase Cavanaugh has more on how the book details Merton’s friendship with an influential UK couple.
The new book details the friendship between Merton and Carolyn and Victor Hammer, a couple heavily involved with UK printing. Victor, an Austrian artist fleeing from the Nazis, encountered Merton during a visit to Gesthemani Abbey, and the two quickly struck up a friendship. Dr. Paul Holbrook, the book’s editor and Hammer family bibliographer, says their correspondence began with a debate on their aesthetic views.
“He saw art in terms of the civitas, the city, the agora, and Merton saw it in terms of the desert, and so that was the point of the beginning of their discussion about art , an interest to cave art, if you will, versus city art,” he explained.
On the same visit, Carolyn was also introduced to Merton. A librarian by training, she would go on to become his apprentice, marry Victor, and found UK’s King Library Press. Throughout their lives, Merton and the Hammers would correspond and collaborate on books and many other projects.
Friday’s launch will take place at UK’s Art Museum at 6:00. It will feature letters between Merton and the Hammers, example of Victor and Carolyn’s works, and several speakers. The museum will also sell copies of the book, entitled The Letters of Thomas Merton and Carolyn and Victor Hammer: Ad Majorem Del Gloriam.
