The Art of Religion: Aestheticizing Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Religious Artifacts (original) (raw)

This dissertation examines the ways in which new meanings and new categories of knowledge about religious artifacts are produced and disseminated by public fine arts museums and academic art history. Through three case studies of artifacts originally produced for religious use, (1) a thirteenth-century medieval Spanish Crucifix in the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, New York, (2) an early twentieth-century Iraqi Tik at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and (3) a fourteenth-century Iranian Mihrab at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I trace the ways through which religious artifacts are reframed as objects of fine art that are collected and exhibited in fine arts museums. As religious artifacts are incorporated into the museum industry, they are encoded with new secularized meanings through the disciplinary lens of academic art history, altering their original religious value and replacing it with aesthetic value. Further, the narratives that fine arts museums tell about their own histories, which immortalize founders, donors, buildings, and collections, eclipse the religious significance of the particular religious artifacts contained within fine arts museums. As the fine arts museum itself comes to be memorialized and valued in religious ways, religious artifacts, in turn, are secularized through the twin processes of aestheticization and musealization. supported me. The patience, and commitment on the part of my dissertation advisor and committee chair, Randall Styers, has allowed me to flourish as a student and scholar. Randall is an incomparable mentor and teacher. I am also grateful to Jonathan Boyarin, John Coffey, David Morgan, and Todd Ochoa who graciously served on my doctoral dissertation committee and offered their time as well as their critical insights and advice as this project progressed. I'd like to thank Richard Viladesau for his insights on Christian art and culture and Carl Ernst for his insights on Islamic art and culture. I'm grateful as well to Gabriel Goldstein for his assistance and guidance related to Judaica in general and the Judaic Art collection at the North Carolina Museum of Art in particular. I'd also like to thank Myra Quick and Tracey Cave in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm grateful for the kindness and assistance that I have received during my research from Kathleen NiCastro, Kerry Schauber, Lucy Harper, Nancy Norwood, and Grant Holcomb at the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester; Natalia Lochnya, Michael Klauke, and Connie Shertz at the North Carolina Museum of Art; and Maryam D. Ekhtiar and Ria Breed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'd like to thank Carolyn Allmendinger and Caroline Wood of the Ackland Museum of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their helpful insights at the start of this project. Many thanks also to Peter Rosenbaum for his editorial assistance at this project's close. Many hours of editing were graciously offered by Randall Styers, John Coffey, Jonathan Boyarin v and Peter Rosenbaum. Despite their best efforts, the mistakes that no doubt remain are entirely my own. I would not have completed this program or this project without the unwavering support of family and friends, who have so graciously and generously been there for me in countless ways. My deepest thanks to