Gretchen Buggeln

Museum space and the experience of the sacred

ABSTRACT This essay explores the dichotomous way we talk about and experience the sacred in art museum space. While Western museum culture has generally encouraged the notion of the museum visit as a quasi-religious, even transcendent, aesthetic encounter with art and architecture, it has shunned particular and obvious expressions of religious devotion. Why is a certain understanding of “sacred space” permissible, while other meanings of that term seem to make museum professionals uncomfortable? Using numerous examples, this essay first considers museum space and the way we have come to talk about it, paying particular attention to the evolution from classical to modern architecture and the effect that has had on the museum experience. It then considers the treatment of religious artifacts and cultures in museum spaces and how this might be changing today, as museums deliberately pursue exhibitions with a more ambitious social agenda, one with contemporary religious content and relevance. The author uses Stephen Greenblatts formulation of two contrasting modes of museum experience, “resonance” and “wonder,” to think through varying dimensions of visitor response, and suggests how a sacred/not sacred tension in Western museums is a product of specific historical relationships between culture, art, and museums.

American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture (review)

in the presence or absence of other singleindustry border companies past or present, comparing the formation or absence of mexican workingclass communities. additionally, built environment scholars would be interested to hear more about not only how places in smeltertown were used but also how they were produced. what were the discussions, and among whom, that led to the specific location and planning of upper smelter and el alto? why did asarco build a limited quantity of housing for mexican workers —in effect, to what extent was el Bajo unplanned? to what extent did the spatial layout of mexican villages influence the organization of el Bajo? How did the arrival of the ymca or the catholic church relate to ideological discourses in the united states and mexico regarding the development of the border at a macro scale? Perales’s decision to focus on onethird of the smelter families, those who made smeltertown their home, limits her placebased approach, since smeltertown is a place defined by migration. more analytical clarity about who chose to stay and who chose to leave (transients and nesters inhabited the region of el Paso, if not smeltertown, side by side) would shed light on who was making a permanent community and at what cost. Perales records that some smeltertown residents remember families being “clannish” and that important ties were formed in smeltertown based on where migrants were coming from in mexico. did “where they came from” in mexico influence whether or not they stayed in smeltertown permanently? were there internal divisions based on language, religion, or origin among the workingclass mexicans who came to el Paso and to asarco more specifically, or stories that might reveal broader conflicts, ambiguities, and contradictions embedded in the border community? there is a tendency in border scholarship to emphasize transience and the destabilization of traditional societies. as researchers, we can be guilty of turning to crisis or change as a way of framing daily experiences. in light of this, Perales’s decision to bring the multiple real and imagined social worlds of esmeltianos to life reframes the border discourse, forcing us to address and situate those people who remained and built community as critical to the development of the region.

Glaubenssache: an exhibition for believers and non-believers november 28, 2008–june 7, 2009, musee d'histoire de la ville de luxembourg

126 structure) with the transitory nature of life paradoxically live together in this artwork. What was odd, however, knowing Hindu traditions as I do, was that the words “God,” “Gods,” “Divinity” and “Deity” were almost absent from the language of the exhibit and exhibit catalog. This is where the obfuscation of American art’s relationship to religion comes to the fore. There is a sense that the curators were more comfortable with Buddhists non-theistic or atheistic terminology than the Hindu. In reading Munroe’s Introduction to the Catalog, terms like “cosmic nature,” “self-realization” and “mindfulness” are used for the notion of ultimate reality. Nirvana and emptiness can be ways to talk about the goal in Buddhism or Taoism, but oneness with God (Brahman, which is a neuter noun that is the name of ultimate reality that underlies all forms, not to be confused with the creator God Brahma, which is a masculine noun) is the ideal in the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. The words for Divinity in the Hindu religions are central, varied and deeply meaningful. In fact, as Hindu scholar, Wendy Doniger quipped, every Sanskrit word means itself, its opposite, and a name of God. Each theme of the show, seven in all, looks at different ways Asia was engaged in this pre-globalization period: nature, landscape, dance, calligraphy, Buddhism and the neo-avant-garde, consciousness in minimalism and music, and finally meditation techniques. It seems here in these themes as well that “God-language” is abandoned for more diluted notions of religious goals. The exhibit fills in the mind with human practices that engage ultimate reality, but in many ways throughout the exhibit, ultimate reality is avoided by the names that Asia gives it. This is the one disappointing character of the otherwise interesting show, focusing on how in Western use Asian cultural traditions are transformed into something completely different in the American art world. The transformation sometimes frees the Asian forms of sectarian baggage. Sometimes, it throws the baby out with the bathwater by leaving the sincere relationship to beauty and Divinity that is living there.

A word on behalf of the object

Material Religion is a journal dedicated to “materializing the study of religion,” but is it also devoted to studying the material of religion? The editors are right when they claim that many studies of religious objects have been inward looking, satisfied with taxonomy and description. They suggest that this older “connoisseurship” model, one that led to “biographies of objects,” went out of fashion when scholars initiated a “pervasive theorization,” a turn to material practices and how they shape selves and communities. But with an eagerness to talk about practice, have we too impatiently breezed by the objects? Humans do things with images and objects, but objects also do things to us; because of this, we need to respect their autonomy and integrity—their materiality. If we have an object before us (and granted this is not always possible), how do we best make use of it? In the 1960s, influenced by the new social history’s interest in the ordinary doings of ordinary people, social historians began thinking seriously about objects as historical sources. The promise was twofold. First, object study would tell us things about people who had left no other historical record. Second, objects, if investigated properly, would tell us things about human values and beliefs that were so prevalent, so assumed, that they were otherwise unarticulated. American material culture study was developed largely by scholars trained in the decorative arts, who wanted the domestic objects they studied to do more, to answer bigger questions. These scholars, nonetheless, remained dedicated to “connoisseurship,” a method that forced them to study objects closely, to understand their forms, their articulation, their materials, the details of their production. This method demanded spending time interacting with material sources. It also required that one know something of the universe of objects in which a particular thing lived. Objects, these scholars argued, existed in answer to specific human needs, and they also represented choices. In order to understand those choices, the scholar needs to know what was not chosen as well.

An architecture of immanence architecture for worship and ministry today Torgerson, Mark A.

In his substantial introduction, Graziano provides the reader with the strands he will consider: what these folk saints have in common, their appeal to the folk, and the conundrum they present to officials. As Graziano maps a narrative of the ways the common people worship, explores the reason for the growth of the devotion, and considers the implication these devotions have on the lives of people, he explores a multitude of questions. How do folk saints arise from a community of believers? What human needs do folk devotions serve and in what ways is this manifested? Who are these saints and what hope do they provide to disenfranchised people? Does their devotion point to areas that are overlooked by political and ecclesial systems of power? How are these devotions and practices perceived by institutions of power—the official church and the government? What do the tensions reveal? In the summary comments in his concluding chapter Graziano masterfully (although almost too briefly) knits together the multiple threads of his investigation. As I read Graziano’s book, I found myself looking forward to the section in each chapter where he provides a rich description of the shrine and his encounters with the devotees there. Here is where Graziano especially attends to the visceral experience of the daily offerings, the special celebrations, and the details of the profuse materiality related to these objects of devotion. This firsthand account is also documented in more than forty photographs included in the book, and extended in a website available at www.culturesofdevotion.com. The engaging images at this website inspired me to delve further into the virtual world with a visit to Sarita Colonia’s site via YouTube where I accompanied a devotee to her sacred shrine. I was struck by how easily folk saints, who emerge from a particular local context, can be so easily disseminated into the realm of the greater global world. Access to their devotion and intercessory powers is thus easily available to a larger population, extending the circle of followers—perhaps the topic of a future book on saints. Frank Graziano’s study is an important contribution to scholarly work that pays serious attention to the faith lives and practices of marginalized populations. The book will be of interest to those who are drawn to the cult of saints, Latin American religiosity, and the plethora of visual and cultural material that accompanies these devotions. It will also be of interest to those engaged in broader topics related to Latin American and religious studies, particularly those interdisciplinary areas that are concerned with popular culture. In his final chapter, Graziano points out that folk saints and their myths are always in the process of being re-created, revised, or adapted as needed. His book affirms the vitality of folk saints and the commitment of their devotees to collaborate with these dynamic intermediaries in their desire to reorder the world, whether God is silent or not.

Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy

Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy. Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, July 16 to October 27, 2003; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, June 12 to August 22, 2004; Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii, September 29, 2004, to January 2, 2005; Bard College Graduate Center, New York City, March 10 to June 5, 2005; Public Museum of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 2 to October 31, 2005.