Call to Review Cambridge Exhibition

Attr. Giovanni di Nicola di Manzoni dal Colle, Inkstand with The Nativity, c.1510 © The Fitzwilliam Museum

Have you visited the Madonnas & Miracles exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge?

The editors of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief are looking to include a review of the exhibition in a forthcoming issue.

If you would like to submit, please visit the Journal’s website.

The exhibition is running until 4 June 2017 in the Adeane & Mellon galleries (free admission).

The Place of Sacred Art: A symposium exploring the interpretation of sacred art in secular and faith contexts

Birmingham Museums

May – 9 May 2017

11.00am – 4.30pm

£20.00 (Adult)

Concession: £15.00

Pre-booking required

This symposium will consider the ways in which people reinterpret sacred art when it is displayed in new contexts or alongside art from different faith traditions. The day will also consider how displaying different types of art in sacred spaces also transforms our understanding of the sacred and artistic.

We will explore how we can look at objects that are already in collections and see them from different perspective, prioritising faith interpretation over the art historical context. It will also hear about how Cathedrals have negotiated being open to artists from different faiths and exhibiting work that challenges and questions.

There will be a variety of presentations exploring different aspects on the theme of the conference:

• An academic, theological overview of the topic: Rev Dr David Cheetham
• Multi-faith Art in a Christian Space: Very Rev Catherine Ogle and Orit Azaaz
• Reinterpreting collections in a Secular Space: Dr Rebecca Bridgeman
• Unexpected Encounters with Contemporary Art in a Sacred Space: Very Rev Peter Bradley

The day is delivered in collaboration with The Church of England and Birmingham Cathedral. It will be hosted by Canon Dr Andrew Smith who will also facilitate discussions enabling participants to explore the topic together.

There will also be a chance to visit the ground breaking and award winning Faith in Birmingham Gallery at the Museum and Art Gallery with curator Rebecca Bridgman.

Conference starts at 11am, registration and refreshments from 10:30am. Lunch is provided. If you have any specific dietary requirements please email Rebecca Bridgman: Rebecca.bridgman@birminghammuseums.org.uk

In the AV Room at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Book tickets online.

Speaker Biographies:

Rev Dr David Cheetham is Reader in Philosophical Theology and Head of the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of numerous academic papers and books including Ways of Meeting and the Theology of Religions (2013), Understanding Interreligious Relations (ed. 2013), Intercultural Theology: Approaches and Themes (ed. 2011) and John Hick (2003).

The Very Revd Catherine Ogle became Dean of Winchester in February 2017 having previously served as Dean of Birmingham from 2010. She leads the cathedral in Winchester and serves as a member of the Bishop of Winchester’s senior staff team. With a first degree in Textile Design Catherine maintains a great interest in the arts and contemporary media. She was Chair of the Award-winning ‘Interfaith Kirklees’ project and has a strong commitment to interfaith dialogue and working. Whist Dean of Birmingham, Catherine worked with Orit on the project ‘Something Good’ a tercentenary celebration that involved working with artists from a variety of faith backgrounds.

Dr Rebecca Bridgman is Birmingham Museums’ first specialist Curator of Islamic & South Asian Arts and holds a leadership role within the curatorial and exhibitions team. She has recently collaborated with colleagues and community groups to create a new display at the Museum & Art Gallery on the theme of ‘Faith in Birmingham’. Rebecca is also chair of the national subject specialist network for Islamic Art and Material Culture that shares knowledge and expertise in these areas throughout the museum sector.

The Very Revd Peter Bradley, DL. Peter Bradley has been Church of England Dean of Sheffield since 2003. During his time in Sheffield, the Cathedral has been substantially rebuilt, from the golden weather vane on the spire to the centre for the homeless far below. During 2015, Peter led for the Cathedral on an international art show in Sheffield, showing major works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection in Turin throughout the Cathedral. More recently, he has welcomed a large exhibition of works celebrating the Divine Comedy by Dante.

Canon Dr Andrew Smith is the Director of Interfaith Relations for the Bishop of Birmingham. He has been involved in different aspects of interfaith work in Birmingham for over twenty years. He has worked closely with St Philip’s Cathedral on the ‘Something Good’ project and with the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the development of their faith gallery. Andrew is the founder and chair of The Feast an interfaith youth project working across the country and more recently in Lebanon. He is a regular speaker and writer on interfaith issues

Call for applications for ‘Talking Religion’

The Empires of Faith project (University of Oxford/British Museum), in partnership with TORCH (the AHRC Graduate Fund), invites applications for Talking Religion.

Talking Religion is a new research group, running in Trinity and Michaelmas of 2017, that will look at the importance of material culture for the study of religion. It will combine a series of interdisciplinary workshops, hands-on experience at both the Ashmolean and the British Museum, and the opportunity to present findings in both academic and public contexts. The research group is organised to coincide with the forthcoming Empires of Faith exhibition on Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Hindu art of the first millennium AD in the Ashmolean running from October 2017 to February 2018.

The ten successful applicants will become associate members of the Empires of Faith research project.

• Participants must be available for both a series of workshops in Trinity Term, and public engagement activities related to the forthcoming exhibition in the Ashmolean in Michaelmas and Hilary term.
• Participants will develop presentations suitable for public audiences in the form of gallery talks to be given over the course of the exhibition, and a presentation for a graduate conference to be held in conjunction with the Empires of Faith project conference in January 2018.
• As part of the Visual Conversation series (OUP), participants will be welcome to submit ideas for possible book collaborations in the future, the first of which, Images of Mithra, will be published in March 2017.

Applicants should be in the first or second years of the D.Phil., and be able to demonstrate a strong interest in aspects of religion and material culture (please note that it is not necessary for applicants to be specialists in this area). Applications are particularly welcome from the faculties and schools of Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, Oriental Studies and Theology.

For further details please visit http://torch.ox.ac.uk/talking-religions

The deadline for expressing interest is November 15th 2017.

Yoga in Museums

Bruce Sullivan has just been interviewed on the Religious Studies Project about Yoga in Museums. The interview is introduced by:

Yoga, in its modern form, should be of great interest to scholars of religion. While it certainly has roots in Vedic culture, the vast majority of Western practitioners do not see it as “religious”, but rather to do with health or “well-being”. Yoga’s status as religious has been in court, but nevertheless it continues to be practised in business, schools and, as Bruce Sullivan tells us, museums.

He has found yoga practiced in a big variety of museums across the US (though not in Europe) and by no means only in museums with Asian collections. The interview strays into a number of aspects of religion in museums, but returns with Bruce’s story of two yoga teachers who saw themselves as in a sense reconsecrating a sacred object by performing yoga in front of it.

Listen to the interview here.

‘Religion in Museums’ on sale today

Announcing the publication of Religion in Museums: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Plate.

Currently on sale for £11.99 in paperback or ebook/PDF from the UK publisher and $17.97 for the paperback or $11.99 for the ebook/PDF from the US publisher.

From Bloomsbury.com:

Bringing together scholars and practitioners from North America, Europe, Russia, and Australia, this pioneering volume provides a global survey of how museums address religion and charts a course for future research and interpretation. 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.

Contents:

Foreword, Sally Promey (Professor of Religion and Visual Culture at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies, Yale University, USA)

Introduction: Religion in Museums, Museums as Religion, Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Plate

Part One: Museum Buildings

1. Museum Architecture and the Sacred: Modes of Engagement, Gretchen Buggeln (Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University, USA)
2. Toward a Theology of the Art Museum, Karla Cavarra Britton (Yale School of Architecture, USA)
3. Native Americans on the National Mall: The Architecture of the Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Gretchen Buggeln (Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University, USA), with Douglas Cardinal (Architect, National Museum of the American Indian, USA) and Tim Johnson (National Museum of American History, USA)

Part Two: Objects, Museums, Religions

4. The Museumification of Religion: Human Evolution and the Display of Ritual, S. Brent Plate (Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College, USA)
5. Altar as Museum, Museum as Altar: Ethnography, Devotion, and Display, Mary Nooter Roberts (UCLA, USA)
6. Religious History Objects in Museums, Lauren F. Turek (Trinity University in San Antonio, USA)
7. Archaeological Displays: Ancient Objects, Current Beliefs, Chiara Zuanni (University of Manchester, UK)
8. Museums, Religious Objects, and the Flourishing Realm of the Supernatural in Modern Asia, Denis Byrne (Western Sydney University, Australia)

Part Three: Responses to Objects, Museums, & Religion

9. Devotional Baggage, Steph Berns (University of Lancaster, UK)
10. Transactional and Experiential Responses to Religious Objects, Graham Howes (Emeritus Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and a Trustee of the Art and Christianity Enquiry)
11. Museums and the Repatriation of Objects, 1945-2015, Mark O’Neill (Director of Policy, Research and Development at Glasgow Life, UK)
12. The Case for the News Media’s Critical Engagement with Museum Religious Exhibits, Menachem Wecker (Art Critic, Chicago, USA)

Part Four: Museum Collecting and Research

13. Museum Collection and the History of Interpretation, David Morgan (Professor of Religious Studies, Duke University, USA)
14. Community-led Museums Exploring Religious Life in Canada: Abbotsford’s Sikh Heritage Museum and Mennonite Heritage Museum, Matthew Francis (Executive Director, Chilliwack Museum and Archives, Canada)
15. Religious Objects and Conservation: The Changing Impact of Religious Objects on Conservators, Samantha Hamilton (Object Conservator at Museum Victoria; University of Melbourne, Australia)
16. Collecting and Research in the Museum of the History of Religion, Ekaterina Teryukova (Deputy Director for Research Affairs,Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg, Russia)
17. Studying, Teaching and Exhibiting Religion: The Marburg Museum of Religions – (Religionskundliche Sammlung), Konstanze Runge (Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Marburg, Germany)

Part Five: Museum Interpretation of Religion and Religious Objects

18. Radical Hospitality: Approaching Religious Understanding in Museums, Amanda Millay Hughes (Duke University Chapel, USA)
19. Islam and Museums: Learning and Outreach, John Reeve (Lecturer in the Department of Art, Design and Museology, UCL, UK)
20. Museums and Religion: Uneasy Companions, Tom Freudenheim ((Smithsonian Institute, USA)
21. Conversing with the Past: First-Person Religion Programming at Colonial Williamsburg, Gretchen Buggeln (Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University, USA)
22. Religion in Museums for Families with Children, Christian Carron (The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, USA), Susan Foutz (The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, USA), and Melissa Pederson (The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, USA)
23. Bringing the Sacred into Art Museums,Gary Vikan (The Walters Art Museum, USA)

Part Six: Presenting Religion in a Variety of Museums

24. Rich and Varied: Religion in Museums, Crispin Paine (Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, UK)
25. The Museum of Biblical Art: a Worthwhile Experiment, Ena Giurescu Heller (Director of Rollins College Cornell Fine Arts Museum, USA)
26. Missionary Museums, Christopher Wingfield (Senior Curator, Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, UK)
27. Religion at Glencairn Museum: Past, Present, and Future, Ed Gyllenhaal (Curator, Glencairn Museum of Religion, Philadelphia, USA)

Afterword: Looking to the Future of Religion in Museums, Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Plate

Spiritualism in Everyday Life

I was fortunate to be part of an 18-month (2014-16) AHRC-funded project called Spirited Stoke: Spiritualism in the Everyday Life of Stoke-on-Trent (SpELS) based at the Open University. The project’s central aim was on public engagement: the production of an exhibition on Spiritualism in collaboration with active Spiritualist churches and our project partner Gladstone Pottery Museum.

Spiritualism is often depicted as a religion of the past, popularized during the Victorian era, and often visualized through the séance where people sat around a table waiting for the medium to connect with departed loved ones. Yet Spiritualism is still an active religion today. The latest UK Census numbers show that while Christianity declined, Spiritualism rose by 17% between 2001 and 2011. Regionally, the highest increase was located in the Midlands, where the SpELS project focused its attention. Stoke-on-Trent has a rich history of Spiritualism, including being the home of Gordon Higginson – the longest serving President of the Spiritualist National Union.

A key component of Spiritualism is its dissociation with materiality. This presented a challenge, considering our task was a museum exhibition. Yet we knew this, and, indeed, the exhibition was partly to challenge ourselves and others about how to display aspects of religion and spirituality that are often considered intangible.

The museum had a dedicated space for us which often acts as a workshop room, yet parts of it are Grade II* listed, limiting our ability to ‘use’ it in particular ways. We chose to change the space allocated to us and gain the assistance of a local art technician to build a living room, linking the importance of the living room as a location of Spiritualist practice from the past, and the place where most of our residential interviews with Spiritualists took place. As museum visitors explored the living room, they were encouraged to watch TV reports on Spiritualism, sift through newspapers where Spiritualism articles could be found, lift up the telephone receiver to hear stories from our Spiritualist participants, go through books on the bookshelf that reflected those found in our participants’ homes, and listen to music that can be heard at contemporary Spiritualist church services and healing services. Outside the living room was a living ‘Memory Tree’ where visitors could leave thoughts to departed loved ones. The museum also let us use a kiln which enabled us to experiment with audio; its space and acoustics contributed to building up an atmosphere that featured recordings of some of our Spiritualist participants recounting how they first got involved in Spiritualism.

Alongside the exhibition, events took place in the museum where visitors had the opportunity to experience Spiritualist practices in a public setting, outside the confines of a church. These events included participating in mediumship demonstrations, obtaining healing and engaging in Spirit Art.

The exhibition at Gladstone Pottery Museum took place in September and October 2015. For more information, visit the Talking with the Dead website where the exhibition has been archived.

We’re on Twitter!

The Religion in Museums blog is now on Twitter. Follow us @ReligioninMsms  to find out about the latest religion and museum news, exhibitions, events and CFP.

Vacancy: The Bishop Otter Scholarship

The trustees of the Bishop Otter Trust seek to appoint a person of proven academic ability to a scholarship for exploration of theology and the arts, based in Chichester, working in partnership with the Centre for Arts and the Sacred at King’s (ASK), London. The scholarship will be for two years. The successful candidate will be ready to undertake some original, post-graduate work of research that will generate theological debate (seminar, lecture, blog, etc.), provide a research resource for the bishop of Chichester, and achieve publication that will constitute serious scholarship. Residential accommodation (including utilities, etc.) is provided.

The scholarship is for £7,000 per annum. The time commitment to the scholarship is three days a week residence in Chichester, the equivalent of a .5 part-time post of 20 hours. Holiday is pro rata for a .5 part-time post.

Applications close at 12.00 noon on Friday 17 March, 2017. Interviews will be held at The Palace, Chichester, on Wednesday, 5 April, 2017. Details are available from: Mrs Margaret Gibson, The Palace, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1PY applications@chichester.anglican.org.

ICOM appoints Director of Dommuseum as its new Director General

‘Museums Heritage Advisor’ reports that Peter Keller has been appointed Director General of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) today.

Keller, who is currently serving his second mandate as ICOM Treasurer, has been Director of the Salzburg Cathedral Museum (Dommuseum), Austria, since 2002. In 2014, he initiated a merger with three other museums to form the DomQuartier Salzburg, a progressive institution whose visitor numbers soared to five times those of the Dommuseum.

Peter Keller studied art history in Vienna, Bonn and Cologne as well as museology in Paris. For three years, he worked at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin before joining the Dommuseum. In addition to his role of Treasurer at ICOM, Keller has also served as Chair and Secretary of the organisation’s International Committee for Historic House Museums (DEMHIST) and as a board member of the Austrian National Committee. In Austria he was also a member of the jury for museum accreditation and of the national advisory council for museums.

Good to see a ‘religion in museums’ man reach the top!

 

Crispin

Religion on Display at the National Museum of African American History

This week the Sacred Matters web magazine published an article by Judith Weisenfeld (Professor of Religion at Princeton University) on religion at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Read it here.

My essay on religion in the @NMAAHC is available at @SacredMatters. https://t.co/Aw3denW3JO

— Judith Weisenfeld (@JLWeisenfeld) January 4, 2017