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Author: Bruce M. Sullivan Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 147259083X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
We have long recognized that many objects in museums were originally on display in temples, shrines, or monasteries, and were religiously significant to the communities that created and used them. How, though, are such objects to be understood, described, exhibited, and handled now that they are in museums? Are they still sacred objects, or formerly sacred objects that are now art objects, or are they simultaneously objects of religious and artistic significance, depending on who is viewing the object? These objects not only raise questions about their own identities, but also about the ways we understand the religious traditions in which these objects were created and which they represent in museums today. Bringing together religious studies scholars and museum curators, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is the first volume to focus on Asian religions in relation to these questions. The contributors analyze an array of issues related to the exhibition in museums of objects of religious significance from Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions. The “lives” of objects are considered, along with the categories of “sacred” and “profane”, “religious” and “secular”. As interest in material manifestations of religious ideas and practices continues to grow, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is a much-needed contribution to religious and Asian studies, anthropology of religion and museums studies.
Author: Bruce M. Sullivan Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 147259083X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
We have long recognized that many objects in museums were originally on display in temples, shrines, or monasteries, and were religiously significant to the communities that created and used them. How, though, are such objects to be understood, described, exhibited, and handled now that they are in museums? Are they still sacred objects, or formerly sacred objects that are now art objects, or are they simultaneously objects of religious and artistic significance, depending on who is viewing the object? These objects not only raise questions about their own identities, but also about the ways we understand the religious traditions in which these objects were created and which they represent in museums today. Bringing together religious studies scholars and museum curators, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is the first volume to focus on Asian religions in relation to these questions. The contributors analyze an array of issues related to the exhibition in museums of objects of religious significance from Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions. The “lives” of objects are considered, along with the categories of “sacred” and “profane”, “religious” and “secular”. As interest in material manifestations of religious ideas and practices continues to grow, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is a much-needed contribution to religious and Asian studies, anthropology of religion and museums studies.
Author: Crispin Paine Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000181588 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 150
Book Description
In the past, museums often changed the meaning of icons or statues of deities from sacred to aesthetic, or used them to declare the superiority of Western society, or simply as cultural and historical evidence. The last generation has seen faith groups demanding to control 'their' objects, and curators recognising that objects can only be understood within their original religious context. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the role religion plays in museums, with major exhibitions highlighting the religious as well as the historical nature of objects.Using examples from all over the world, Religious Objects in Museums is the first book to examine how religious objects are transformed when they enter the museum, and how they affect curators and visitors. It examines the full range of meanings that religious objects may bear - as scientific specimen, sacred icon, work of art, or historical record. Showing how objects may be used to argue a point, tell a story or promote a cause, may be worshipped, ignored, or seen as dangerous or unlucky, this highly accessible book is an essential introduction to the subject.
Author: Cynthia Hahn Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1780237022 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
From skeletons to strips of cloth to little pieces of dust, reliquaries can be found in many forms, and while sometimes they may seem grotesque on their surface, they are nonetheless invested with great spiritual and memorial value. In this book, Cynthia Hahn offers the first full survey in English of the societal value of reliquaries, showing how they commemorate religious and historical events and, more important, inspire awe, faith, and, for many, the miraculous. Hahn looks deeply into the Christian tradition, examining relics and reliquaries throughout history and around the world, going from the earliest years of the cult of saints through to the post-Reformation response. She looks at relic footprints, incorrupt bodies, the Crown of Thorns, the Shroud of Turin, and many other renowned relics, and she shows how the architectural creation of sacred space and the evocation of the biblical tradition of the temple is central to the reliquary’s numinous power. She also discusses relics from other traditions—especially from Buddhism and Islam—and she even looks at how reliquaries figure in contemporary art. Fascinatingly illustrated throughout, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the enduring power of sacred objects.
Author: Nicolas Howe Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022637680X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
“What does it mean to see the American landscape in a secular way?” asks Nicolas Howe at the outset of this innovative, ambitious, and wide-ranging book. It’s a surprising question because of what it implies: we usually aren’t seeing American landscapes through a non-religious lens, but rather as inflected by complicated, little-examined concepts of the sacred. Fusing geography, legal scholarship, and religion in a potent analysis, Howe shows how seemingly routine questions about how to look at a sunrise or a plateau or how to assess what a mountain is both physically and ideologically, lead to complex arguments about the nature of religious experience and its implications for our lives as citizens. In American society—nominally secular but committed to permitting a diversity of religious beliefs and expressions—such questions become all the more fraught and can lead to difficult, often unsatisfying compromises regarding how to interpret and inhabit our public lands and spaces. A serious commitment to secularism, Howe shows, forces us to confront the profound challenges of true religious diversity in ways that often will have their ultimate expression in our built environment. This provocative exploration of some of the fundamental aspects of American life will help us see the land, law, and society anew.
Author: Mircea Eliade Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780156792011 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Famed historian of religion Mircea Eliade observes that even moderns who proclaim themselves residents of a completely profane world are still unconsciously nourished by the memory of the sacred. Eliade traces manifestations of the sacred from primitive to modern times in terms of space, time, nature, and the cosmos. In doing so he shows how the total human experience of the religious man compares with that of the nonreligious. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the history of religion, but its perspective also emcompasses philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. It will appeal to anyone seeking to discover the potential dimensions of human existence. -- P. [4] of cover.
Author: Roger Homan Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN: 9780754650737 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
In the view of Hegel and others, pagan art is the art of the beautiful and Christian art is the art of the sublime. Roger Homan provides a comprehensive and informative account of the course of Christian art, encompassing a re-evaluation of conventional aesthetics and its application to religious art. Homan argues that taste and aesthetics are fashioned by morality and belief, and that Christian art must be assessed not in terms of its place in the history of art but of its place in Christian faith. The narrative basis of Christian art is documented but religious art is also explored as the expression of the devout and as an element in the trappings of collective expression and personal quest. Sections in the book explore pilgrimage art, puritan art, the tension of Gothic and Classical, church architecture and the language of worship. Current areas of debate, including the relationship of ethics to the appreciation of art, are also discussed.
Author: Gretchen Buggeln Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1474255531 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
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.
Author: Pooyan Tamimi Arab Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1351176218 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 687
Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion places objects and bodies at the center of scholarly studies of religious life and practice. Propelling forward the study of material religion, the Handbook first reveals the deep philosophical roots of its key categories and then advances new critical analytics, such as queer materialities, inescapable material entanglements, and hyperobjects that explode the small-scale personal view on religions. The Handbook comprises thirty chapters, written by an international team of contributors who offer a global perspective of religious pasts and presents, divided into four thematic parts: Genealogies of Material Religion Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion Entanglements, Entrapment, Escaping Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions In these four parts, the study of material religion is redirected towards systematic, critical interrogations of the imbrication of religious structures of power with racial, economic, political, and gendered forms of domination. From Spinoza’s political theology to African philosophies of ubuntu; from the queer materialities of Mesoamerican religion to the Satanic Temple of the United States; from Islamic love and sacrifice in human-animal entanglements to Shia militants’ attachment to weaponry; from epidemic cataclysm in Latin America to vast infrastructures and the gathering of millions in India’s Kumbh Mela, the study of material religion proves to be the study par excellence of the human condition. The Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, anthropology, history, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in related fields such as archeology, sociology, and philosophy.
Author: Robert M. Hayden Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317281918 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Antagonistic Tolerance examines patterns of coexistence and conflict amongst members of different religious communities, using multidisciplinary research to analyze groups who have peacefully intermingled for generations, and who may have developed aspects of syncretism in their religious practices, and yet have turned violently on each other. Such communities define themselves as separate peoples, with different and often competing interests, yet their interaction is usually peaceable provided the dominance of one group is clear. The key indicator of dominance is control over central religious sites, which may be tacitly shared for long periods, but later contested and even converted as dominance changes. By focusing on these shared and contested sites, this volume allows for a wider understanding of relations between these communities. Using a range of ethnographic, historical and archaeological data from the Balkans, India, Mexico, Peru, Portugal and Turkey, Antagonistic Tolerance develops a comparative model of the competitive sharing and transformation of religious sites. These studies are not considered as isolated cases, but are instead woven into a unified analytical framework which explains how long-term peaceful interactions between religious communities can turn conflictual and even result in ethnic cleansing.
Author: Jeffrey Abt Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1805392794 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 318
Book Description
Displays of Jewish ritual objects in public, non-Jewish settings by Jews are a comparatively re-cent phenomenon. So too is the establishment of Jewish museums. This volume explores the origins of the Jewish Museum of New York and its evolution from collecting and displaying Jewish ritual objects, to Jewish art, to exhibiting avant-garde art devoid of Jewish content, created by non-Jews. Established within a rabbinic seminary, the museum’s formation and development reflect changes in Jewish society over the twentieth century as it grappled with choices between religion and secularism, particularism and universalism, and ethnic pride and assimilation.
Author: Bruce M. Sullivan
Author: Bruce M. Sullivan
Author: Crispin Paine
Author: Cynthia Hahn
Author: Nicolas Howe
Author: Mircea Eliade
Author: Roger Homan
Author: Gretchen Buggeln
Author: Pooyan Tamimi Arab
Author: Robert M. Hayden
Author: Jeffrey Abt