It s not uncommon for Harvard Divinity School s Center for the Study of World Religions to play host to prominent religious leaders and scholars of religion from around the globe. But starting in February, a more unlikely group of national and international guests the directors of some of the world s leading museums will be visiting the Center at regular intervals. Additionally, the group will discuss the trend to move beyond objects and to incorporate performance and other means of artistic expression in museum spaces. The role of religion in shaping society is hotly contested, said Lawrence Sullivan, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Sacred arts create a special place to thrash out the meaning of religion in a democracy.
This meeting gathers a critical mass of leaders and models to provoke a new place for religion in the museum and in society. W. Richard West, Director of the National Museum of the Native American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., was the keynote speaker for the February conference. The Smithsonian s National Museum of the Native American Indian has embarked on a journey distinctly spiritual in character because of the nature of the material it holds and the relationship and meaning of those objects to the living Native peoples whose ancestors created them, said West, who is a Cheyenne. Although these matters initially may appear more obvious in the case of this particular museum, they will have, in the future, seminal consequences for all museums as they consider the diversity of their constituencies, the source and definition of interpretive authority, and highly differentiated attitudes toward the import and meaning of museum objects and collections. Discussions were led by Sullivan and Ronne Hartfeld, former executive director of museum education at the Art Institute of Chicago.