Call for Papers for an Open Session at the 20 th EASR Conference Vilnius University (Lithuania), 4 th -8 th: The Exhibition of Religion: Musealising the Intangible Through Materiality and Technology

Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 2023

Museology and the Sacred. Materials for a discussion. (Ed. François Mairesse), 2018

Religion in Museums: Euthanized Sacredness, in the Beholder’s Eye, or a Multi-Tool for Shifting Needs? Three suggested models to discuss how museums affect sacredness (2018) MUSEOLOGY AND THE SACRED - MATERIALS FOR A DISCUSSION Papers from the ICOFOM 41th symposium held in Tehran (Iran), 15-19 October 2018, 145-148. Ed. François Mairesse Religion in museums: Euthanized sacredness, in the beholder’s eye, or a multi-tool for shifting needs? Three suggested models to discuss how museums affect sacredness. Abstract for paper for the ICOFOM 41st symposium Museology and the sacred Tehran, 15-19 October 2018. Aimed for the analysis plan Museality-heritage-sacred. by Helena Wangefelt Ström, PhD candidate in Museology, Umeå University (Sweden). helena.wangefelt.strom@umu.se What happens when religion in the shape of objects imbued with religious meaning is transformed into cultural heritage? What values are added, what are lost, and who is the performing agent? These questions concern what museums do to objects connected to religion, calling for a meditated use of terms such as holy, sacred, religious, and spiritual (all employed in recent research and policy documents by, for example, UNESCO, while in many cases as interchangeable). This paper suggests three models to understand the processes of heritagisation of religion and the factors and agents involved, starting from a historical background in European, in particular Italian, Early Modernity. A frequently used scholarly model depicts the museum as a killing of previous identities, and the objects as provided with entirely new identities, and lives, as museum objects. This view brings on dramatic effects for sacred objects, how they are handled and narrated in the museum, and possibly on how they are viewed by the visitors. The use or not of information signs before sacred objects in museums is an aspect on this matter. The second model is the hybrid identity, where a museum object can be said to possess two authentic identities simultaneously, depending on the views and beliefs of the beholder: authentic sacredness, or authentic art object and evidence of history. This view may fit well with the focus on the individual in our time. The third model presented is based on the two previous ones, and suggests a hybridity not only in identities or living/dead, but defined by the uses of the objects. Even musealized objects can, as in the cases of religious treasuries or of certain religious images in museums, shift identity between museum object, object of devotion (to be carried in processions or used in rituals), legitimization symbol (bishops’ ordinations etc), and, historically, as a monetary reserve to be sold if needed. The identity of the object shifts, also in practice of being looked at behind glass or being used and touched, depending on the use currently applied to it. A distinction between cultual use and cultural use is relevant for this model. I argue that these different approaches to sacred objects in museum pose different museological challenges and possibilities, and also ascribes different agencies to museum staff as well as to the visitors.

2013

Contributors from a variety of disciplines and institutions explore the work of museums from many perspectives, including cultural studies, religious studies, and visual and material culture. Most museums throughout the world – whether art, archaeology, anthropology or history museums – include religious objects, and an increasing number are beginning to address religion as a major category of human identity. With rising museum attendance and the increasingly complex role of religion in social and geopolitical realities, this work of stewardship and interpretation is urgent and important. Religion in Museums is divided into six sections: museum buildings, reception, objects, collecting and research, interpretation of objects and exhibitions, and the representation of religion in different types of museums. Topics covered include repatriation, conservation, architectural design, exhibition, heritage, missionary collections, curation, collections and display, and the visitor's experience. Case studies provide comprehensive coverage and range from museums devoted specifically to the diversity of religious traditions, such as the State Museum of the History of Religion in St Petersburg, to exhibitions centered on religion at secular museums, such as Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, at the British Museum.

This project aimed to prove that religious objects can obtain and maintain various identities simultaneously. Through a case study of objects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and of temples in Montreal, this project argued that methods of display and environment, as well as history and beliefs shape the purpose and identities of the objects. The project concluded with a look at the importance of ethical curating going forward in Canadian museums and galleries.

In Narrating Religion, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston, MacMillan Interdisciplinary Handbook, pp. 333-352. Museums narrate religion through objects, words, and space. Using many examples from a wide range of museums from North America and Europe, I discuss how museums are sites for both the curation and the contestation of what makes an object religious or spiritual. Focused on questions such as how museums engage with audiences that continue to venerate objects in their collections and respond to repatriation claims from nations and peoples who demand the return of their objects, the essay also considers museums founded explicitly by religious groups who seek to narrate religion on their own terms.

Material Religion, 2019

CAA Conference Abstracts, 2019

Paper Abstract: Recent scholarship in the field of medieval studies has shown the importance of souvenirs collected from sacred sites and used to extra-illustrate personal Books of Hours to create a multifaceted devotional experience (see, for example, Megan H. Foster-Campbell’s essay in Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical, and Spatial Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art). This paper shifts the focus to the present day in order to explore the afterlife of religious souvenirs and third-class relics that have been incorporated into contemporary artworks. The work of three women artists working in media including assemblage, film, and installation will show the continuity of the idea of a perceived transfer of efficacy from a sacred site/object to their relocation in a work of contemporary art - and how such ritual engagement is received by the religious and art communit(ies) today. Panel Overview: From painted altarpieces to prayer rugs and reliquaries, museums are filled with objects originally created for use within a devotional or ritual practice. However, once removed from an overtly religious context and reframed within a public museum or art space, the function, audience, and perceived agency of these artifacts can change, as do the expected rules of viewer engagement. By exploring the intersection of art history, anthropology, and religious studies, this panel adopts a comparative and diachronic perspective to understand the historical and conceptual dynamics governing such acts of mediation for modern and contemporary audiences. Whereas museum professionals of the 19th century tended to separate the beliefs and practices of religious devotion from the aesthetic and pedagogical aims of the museum, scholars today increasingly recognize that the distinction between ritual devotion and a more objective aesthetic appreciation can be blurry. In the mid-1990s, Carol Duncan acknowledged the secular museum’s role within the staging of civic rituals. More recently, Crispin Paine and others have addressed the spiritual dimensions of contemporary art and the curatorial challenges of displaying sacred artifacts for heterogenous publics. Once religious material culture is displayed to audiences within museums of fine and decorative art, ethnography, and history, how does the process of musealization transform an object’s narrative potential? Although the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment museum paradigm privileges visual faculties above tactile or auditory, how can curators, artists, and museum educators today help audiences understand the performative, interactive, and multisensorial dimensions of devotional practices past and present?

2013

, 2013