Exhibitions and Displays of Religious Art

Exhibitions and displays of religious art have been an integral part of religion since the manufacture of the first religious objects and the adornment of the first sacred places. Growing more complex and varied with time, such manifestations within religions provided models for art exhibitions associated with academies, galleries, museums, and other institutions with secular purposes by the mid-18th and 19th centuries. Typically organized around the works of an artist, a group of artists, art academies, or the holdings of private lenders, such exhibitions included works with both sacred and secular subjects. Exhibition design drew on the shapes and materials of the works, privileging formal qualities over meanings, including any religious content, even for works that had once belonged to sacred settings but had migrated to private collections. The final decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries were characterized by both exhibitions organized by religious authorities for the general public and exhibitions of specific genres of sacred art organized by museums and galleries. These, together with international exhibitions and World’s Fairs which showcased non-Western religious objects, helped form the modern notions of material religion that would find voice in the exhibitions of recent decades which have focused on particular faiths in geographical, historical, cultural, and iconological terms. These exhibitions have addressed the major religions of the world, especially Christianity and Islam, in both multi-faith and single-faith contexts. Input from practitioners and source communities at the planning and installation stages, as well as for public programming and events, has helped ensure greater authenticity in the displays and encouraged a movement away from considering religious objects exclusively in terms of art.