Sacred: An Exhibit at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
review by Kimberly Vrudny
Kimberly Vrudny is the senior editor of ARTS, and is an associate professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She wrote this review for the ACE Bulletin (no. 78, summer 2014), a publication of Art and Christianity Enquiry in London (see acetrust.org). ARTS is reprinting the review with permission.
For almost a year, visitors to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts could visit Sacred, a special exhibit of pieces from the museum’s permanent collection. The objects were judiciously grouped in ten galleries around the themes of power, devotion, death, music, fluids, garments, and worship, as well as sacred practice, the sacred journey, and the profane. In materials written to accompany the exhibit, the curators indicated their postmodern posture, expressing that the word “ ‘sacred’ . . . [c]onventionally used to describe something or someone imbued with divinity, . . . has evolved as societies have become more diverse and secular.” They assembled the exhibit to invite visitors to explore what “sacred” means for them, without advancing any particular religious tradition or truth claim. “What’s sacred today?,” they asked. They answered their question cautiously. “The word hinges on the speaker: what is sacred is often very personal.”
Kimberly Vrudny is the senior editor of ARTS, and is an associate professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She wrote this review for the ACE Bulletin (no. 78, summer 2014), a publication of Art and Christianity Enquiry in London (see acetrust.org). ARTS is reprinting the review with permission.
For almost a year, visitors to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts could visit Sacred, a special exhibit of pieces from the museum’s permanent collection. The objects were judiciously grouped in ten galleries around the themes of power, devotion, death, music, fluids, garments, and worship, as well as sacred practice, the sacred journey, and the profane. In materials written to accompany the exhibit, the curators indicated their postmodern posture, expressing that the word “ ‘sacred’ . . . [c]onventionally used to describe something or someone imbued with divinity, . . . has evolved as societies have become more diverse and secular.” They assembled the exhibit to invite visitors to explore what “sacred” means for them, without advancing any particular religious tradition or truth claim. “What’s sacred today?,” they asked. They answered their question cautiously. “The word hinges on the speaker: what is sacred is often very personal.”
Artist Unknown The Bodhisattva Guanyin late
11th-early 12th century
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Indeed, the sacred is often very personal. And it is also very often shared in community. Even when communities of faith contradict one another on their finer points, they often can find unity in their common desire for wisdom, for compassion, for justice, for truth, for goodness. For beauty. By putting pieces from varying traditions side by side in their common quest for the sacred, the curators do something significant for visitors. They point to a greater union among religions than is often emphasized.
Given the art world’s ongoing distaste for the religious, the curators stepped into minefields which they navigated carefully and, for the most part, well. Indeed, it took some degree of curatorial courage to lift up intentionally the role that religion has played in creating so many of the works in the collection. The show was a largely successful effort to raise questions about the meaning of the sacred and its embodiment in material objects, for which The Minneapolis Institute of Arts should be praised.
The curators wisely pointed to the reality that most of these objects were not intended for a museum. However, some of the decisions they made in presenting them tried to shrink the distance between the gallery and the sanctuary, and to a deleterious effect. In the space designated for exploration of sacred devotion, for example, the curators tried to create a space for meditation and thereby recreate the original setting for the piece. With lights otherwise dimmed, a bright light fell on the Bodhisattva Guanyin, “the one who hears our cries.” This deity of compassion is said to manifest as either male or female, depending on the one in need—and in this installation developed by Jan Estep, professor of art at the University of Minnesota, meditation pillows were arranged around the figure while Buddhist meditations on compassion and lovingkindness were filtered into the space through a sound system. Some visitors to the museum sat on the pillows, and thereby became a part of the exhibit, as others meandered through the installation taking in not only the Bodhisattva, but also those who were attempting to meditate. This gave the experience a rather peculiar twist, and made the empty box in gallery 262 all the more poignant. It was installed to call attention to the wise Native American prohibition of public viewing of sacred objects.
Given the art world’s ongoing distaste for the religious, the curators stepped into minefields which they navigated carefully and, for the most part, well. Indeed, it took some degree of curatorial courage to lift up intentionally the role that religion has played in creating so many of the works in the collection. The show was a largely successful effort to raise questions about the meaning of the sacred and its embodiment in material objects, for which The Minneapolis Institute of Arts should be praised.
The curators wisely pointed to the reality that most of these objects were not intended for a museum. However, some of the decisions they made in presenting them tried to shrink the distance between the gallery and the sanctuary, and to a deleterious effect. In the space designated for exploration of sacred devotion, for example, the curators tried to create a space for meditation and thereby recreate the original setting for the piece. With lights otherwise dimmed, a bright light fell on the Bodhisattva Guanyin, “the one who hears our cries.” This deity of compassion is said to manifest as either male or female, depending on the one in need—and in this installation developed by Jan Estep, professor of art at the University of Minnesota, meditation pillows were arranged around the figure while Buddhist meditations on compassion and lovingkindness were filtered into the space through a sound system. Some visitors to the museum sat on the pillows, and thereby became a part of the exhibit, as others meandered through the installation taking in not only the Bodhisattva, but also those who were attempting to meditate. This gave the experience a rather peculiar twist, and made the empty box in gallery 262 all the more poignant. It was installed to call attention to the wise Native American prohibition of public viewing of sacred objects.
Monks of the
Gyuto Tantric
University
Yamantaka Mandala, 1991
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
In a similar vein, the idea that the sacred has historically drawn people together in some kind of fellowship or kinship by common understanding, ritual practice, or devotion was rather lost in the galleries—even in the rooms allocated to these themes. This was evident, for example, in the entry to the exhibit, devoted to sacred practice, where (as unlikely as this sounds) a sand mandala was suspended from the wall. In 1991, monks from the Gyuto Tantric University visited the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and, for four weeks, became an exhibit unto themselves as they demonstrated their spiritual practice by painstakingly blowing grains of colored sand onto a board, creating in the process a breathtaking image of Buddhist cosmology. Of course, in Tibet, the monks would have carried the mandala to the ocean to pour the sand back into the sea, an act imbued with meaning, signifying the principle of impermanence so central to the Buddhist worldview. However, in Minneapolis, with the permission of the monks who wanted to share more about their tradition with our community, the museum called upon 3M, an adhesives company based in the area, to develop a glue that could be blown into a tent to secure the sand upon the board, thereby turning the mandala into an object for the museum’s permanent collection. While I love this piece, I have always been sorry that the offering of something so beautiful back to nature and all that such a movement ritually represents was rather upended when the monks visited Minneapolis.
With these experiences notwithstanding, the most powerful exhibits were those that pressed the question of what constitutes the sacred. Galleries 277 and 263, for example, were devoted to the sacredness of death and of the profane. The works in these galleries were not overtly religious though, as Tillich might have agreed, I appreciate how such works, by raising questions of meaning, bring us onto religious ground. The gallery exploring the theme of death not only raised the inevitable questions linked to mortality, like the state of one’s soul and hope for an afterlife, but also questions of justice when death is unnecessary and too soon. So here one encounters, for example, a gelatin silver print by Shomei Tomatsu (1961) of a wristwatch damaged by an atomic bomb and stopped at 11:02, the hour when, on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The visitor also witnesses Gilles Peress’s 1994 photograph of a corpse in Rwanda. Entering then gallery 263 devoted to the profanity of war, one comes upon two works situated in conversation with each other: Henry Moore’s Warrior with Shield (1953), and Do Ho Suh’s Some/One (2005). Moore’s sculpture depicts the warrior, gouged, with amputated limbs, and in fallen retreat, folding in upon himself, seeking shelter behind his shield, one surmises, from the slaughter being inflicted by the enemy. In this gallery, he seems to be cowering from Some/One, a grand, disembodied stainless steel robe rising up out of the ground—but which, upon closer inspection, the viewer realizes, is made entirely of hundreds of military dog-tags, each identifying the body of a soldier, a person most probably lost to war. Thus, both Henry Moore and Do Ho Suh express an all too familiar anguish, joining in visual form a song mourning the waste of life, lamenting an inability to resolve conflicts without turning to violence.
It is worth asking what, if anything, about the works in these particular galleries devoted to death and to the profane is sacred? For me, their message is prophetic. I sensed the presence of God, and heard through them God’s divine “no!” to the ways we relate to one another through conflict rather than through peace. I visited the museum during the annual “Art in Bloom” event, when florists were invited to create arrangements inspired by works in the collection. The simple orchid, as I recall, emerging from a vase shaped, colored, and distressed to imitate the warrior’s shield, functioned for me as an apt homage. It elicited tears.
The exhibit raised questions, many of which were left without resolution. Were the curators treating religion itself as some kind of relic—especially Christianity, which was acknowledged with only a few pieces—as a phenomenon seemingly best understood from a distance of both time and space? Were they sensitive to the theological hope that any or all of these artistic expressions might point to something objectively real with varying degrees of accuracy, and to the possibility that there might be a lasting benefit in the formation of community around ideals of goodness and compassion, and even of truth? Or did they approach the sacred as a sociological phenomenon, an intellectual curiosity, a deposit for abandoned reliquaries, of sorts? Were the pieces cast in terms of traditions still living, as emblematic of an ongoing and nearly universal human desire for the sacred? Or was this aspiration of the human spirit for the divine put problematically on display, the gaze directed for a time to the peculiar phenomenon that humans once experienced a sense of the sacred—until the eye was attracted, in attention-deficit style, to the next object, in the next gallery, and then the next?
While experiences of the holy are no doubt possible in the gallery as in the temple, this exhibit made me more acutely aware of the differences between the two. At one point, in observing the visitors to the exhibit, I became aware that most of us meandered through the exhibit quietly, and alone. I became deeply aware of my own isolation. I left the museum aching for community—not just any community, but a community with a tradition of balancing contemplation with active engagement in the world. It paradoxically quickened in me a desire for intimacy with a living tradition that inspires a transformation of heart and mind so that hope in the possibility of lovingkindness in the world is not lost but realized, at least to some degree. The exhibit stirred in me a longing for the sacred—which, in the end, and despite questions that are left lingering, is maybe the greatest evidence of the exhibition’s overall success. Perhaps it is unfair and even unkind to ask for more.
With these experiences notwithstanding, the most powerful exhibits were those that pressed the question of what constitutes the sacred. Galleries 277 and 263, for example, were devoted to the sacredness of death and of the profane. The works in these galleries were not overtly religious though, as Tillich might have agreed, I appreciate how such works, by raising questions of meaning, bring us onto religious ground. The gallery exploring the theme of death not only raised the inevitable questions linked to mortality, like the state of one’s soul and hope for an afterlife, but also questions of justice when death is unnecessary and too soon. So here one encounters, for example, a gelatin silver print by Shomei Tomatsu (1961) of a wristwatch damaged by an atomic bomb and stopped at 11:02, the hour when, on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The visitor also witnesses Gilles Peress’s 1994 photograph of a corpse in Rwanda. Entering then gallery 263 devoted to the profanity of war, one comes upon two works situated in conversation with each other: Henry Moore’s Warrior with Shield (1953), and Do Ho Suh’s Some/One (2005). Moore’s sculpture depicts the warrior, gouged, with amputated limbs, and in fallen retreat, folding in upon himself, seeking shelter behind his shield, one surmises, from the slaughter being inflicted by the enemy. In this gallery, he seems to be cowering from Some/One, a grand, disembodied stainless steel robe rising up out of the ground—but which, upon closer inspection, the viewer realizes, is made entirely of hundreds of military dog-tags, each identifying the body of a soldier, a person most probably lost to war. Thus, both Henry Moore and Do Ho Suh express an all too familiar anguish, joining in visual form a song mourning the waste of life, lamenting an inability to resolve conflicts without turning to violence.
It is worth asking what, if anything, about the works in these particular galleries devoted to death and to the profane is sacred? For me, their message is prophetic. I sensed the presence of God, and heard through them God’s divine “no!” to the ways we relate to one another through conflict rather than through peace. I visited the museum during the annual “Art in Bloom” event, when florists were invited to create arrangements inspired by works in the collection. The simple orchid, as I recall, emerging from a vase shaped, colored, and distressed to imitate the warrior’s shield, functioned for me as an apt homage. It elicited tears.
The exhibit raised questions, many of which were left without resolution. Were the curators treating religion itself as some kind of relic—especially Christianity, which was acknowledged with only a few pieces—as a phenomenon seemingly best understood from a distance of both time and space? Were they sensitive to the theological hope that any or all of these artistic expressions might point to something objectively real with varying degrees of accuracy, and to the possibility that there might be a lasting benefit in the formation of community around ideals of goodness and compassion, and even of truth? Or did they approach the sacred as a sociological phenomenon, an intellectual curiosity, a deposit for abandoned reliquaries, of sorts? Were the pieces cast in terms of traditions still living, as emblematic of an ongoing and nearly universal human desire for the sacred? Or was this aspiration of the human spirit for the divine put problematically on display, the gaze directed for a time to the peculiar phenomenon that humans once experienced a sense of the sacred—until the eye was attracted, in attention-deficit style, to the next object, in the next gallery, and then the next?
While experiences of the holy are no doubt possible in the gallery as in the temple, this exhibit made me more acutely aware of the differences between the two. At one point, in observing the visitors to the exhibit, I became aware that most of us meandered through the exhibit quietly, and alone. I became deeply aware of my own isolation. I left the museum aching for community—not just any community, but a community with a tradition of balancing contemplation with active engagement in the world. It paradoxically quickened in me a desire for intimacy with a living tradition that inspires a transformation of heart and mind so that hope in the possibility of lovingkindness in the world is not lost but realized, at least to some degree. The exhibit stirred in me a longing for the sacred—which, in the end, and despite questions that are left lingering, is maybe the greatest evidence of the exhibition’s overall success. Perhaps it is unfair and even unkind to ask for more.
