Sharing God's Word in the British Museum

ICOFOM Study Series

Museums offer three very different things: public entertainment, public education and scholarly research. In all three areas museums have, over the past generation, transformed the ways they understand, use and present religion. This transformation in museums worldwide has forged new correspondences with other kinds of visitor attraction, like places of worship, libraries, pilgrimage centres, theme parks or zoos. The barriers that once separated museums from other institutions that welcome visitors have broken down, perhaps especially in the field of religion. In this short note I shall look briefly at some of the approaches museums have come to share with other attractions that present religion to visitors, and at some of the motives they share.

Published in 'Religion in Museums: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives' (2017) edited by Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, S. Brent Plate. Bloomsbury, pp. 231-238.

In Narrating Religion, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston, MacMillan Interdisciplinary Handbook, pp. 333-352. Museums narrate religion through objects, words, and space. Using many examples from a wide range of museums from North America and Europe, I discuss how museums are sites for both the curation and the contestation of what makes an object religious or spiritual. Focused on questions such as how museums engage with audiences that continue to venerate objects in their collections and respond to repatriation claims from nations and peoples who demand the return of their objects, the essay also considers museums founded explicitly by religious groups who seek to narrate religion on their own terms.

Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2018

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.

2019

Recognizing and interpreting diversity brings new challenges to public historians, and this is certainly true when it comes to religion. In a new volume for the American Association for State and Local History’s Interpreting History series, Barbara Franco, Gretchen Buggeln, and other professionals from museums and historic sites explore the difficulties and rewards of interpreting religious history to audiences which may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the topic. The book provides no blanket solutions but offers a variety of strategies that can be applied to a range of situations. The authors stress tenets of good historical interpretation, from listening and responding to visitors to being adaptable in the face of internal and external challenges. About the Author Hannah Overstreet is a Public History MA student at Loyola University Chicago with interests in exhibition development and interpretation. She has previously interned with the Field Museum’s Exhibitions and Botany dep...

This article examines critical and visitor responses to a section on 'alternative' creation stories located within Life on Earth, a science-led natural history gallery, at Leeds Museums and Galleries, UK. This section, by inviting visitors to express alternative creation stories, appears to allow 'a foot in the door' of the science-led gallery to non-fact-based religious beliefs. The museological debates surrounding this inclusion offer broad insights into the tensions between fact-based, and essentially secular, interpretations within museums displays and the relationships that an increasingly multi-faith public have or can expect to have with the museum as a provider of and location of, knowledge. A consideration of the visitor comments suggests that the public are less concerned with the appropriateness of museum categories than they are with taking the opportunity to express their own thoughts and beliefs.

Handouts for my undergraduate students at KCL. Module on Introduction to Old Testament/Hebrew Bible

Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, 2012

The Senses and Society, 2020

This article examines the sensory dimension of religious publicity, focused on the case of an evangelical museum in the United States. Washington D.C.’s Museum of the Bible (MOTB) was envisioned and funded primarily by conservative Protestants, and is a revealing case of religion in public life because most of the creative labor of design was conceived and executed by secular firms who do not typically work for faith-based clients. The professional expertise of these firms, “experiential design,” informs a sea change in contemporary museology and the expansion of the experience economy in late modernity. Ultimately, I argue that MOTB’s engagement with experiential design indexes the power of entertainment in late modern life, as the sensory repertoire at play operates with largely unquestioned legitimacy and presumed efficacy. By mobilizing the cultural capital of design, an evangelical museum makes a claim for diverse audiences in a deeply public setting.