Un Moyen Âge recomposé. Variations autour du déploiement ecclésial dans l'espace d'exposition (original) (raw)

2022, Culture et Musées, n° 40

Contribution au numéro spécial "Exposer des objets religieux". The Middle Ages reconstructed. Variations on ecclesiastical implementation in exhibition spaces A variety of approaches can be adopted in the patrimonial transmission of religious objects. One such approach is concentrated on highlighting the technical, historical or aesthetic aspects of pieces to the detriment of the mentioning of former modes of efficiency. The artifacts are thus presented for their material qualities, how they can be typologized and as markers in formal histories. Another approach prefers to shed light on the socio-historic conditions that make it so that certain types of objects, at one point or another, are charged with sacred meaning. Regardless of where an institution situates itself between the two, the reappearance of objects associated with the Invisible is a challenge for a museum. Is the goal to reconstruct the intangible environment surrounding them? Can material fragments of lost or transformed religious practices allow for the reconstruction, in museum spaces, of a vision of religious practices, the organization of societies, rich networks of symbols and lost customs? What levels of meaning are expographic norms able to transcribe for objects such as those relating to Western medieval spirituality? Are they able to create exhibition and discussion spaces that accurately reflect the pre-museographical visibility and operability of these types of objects? Expographic trial and error around numinous heritage have to do with the retelling of History through the selection and handling of its vestiges. These experiments question the boundary between what is real and reconstructed, the authentic and the reproduction, between effects of signifying and effects of presence (to borrow the terms coined by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht). Through objects relating to Christianity, this article aims to describe the resurgence of forms such as the outline of an altar or a cross as freeform variations on the characteristics of religious practice and medieval ecclesiastical spaces. Far beyond pointing out simple similarities with original elements, we aim to question the ways in which these deviations inform the artifacts that surround them and serve to support or destroy their anthropological meaning. In addition, Hayden Whites and Stephen Bann’s work make possible an examination of the extent to which the “museumification” of medieval civilization plays with both synecdoche and metonymy. Finally, by approaching the long rumination and reconstruction that this civilization has undergone during its patrimonial assimilation, this article touches on the dialogue with objects, that are, by their very nature, epiphanic (i.e.: destined to be effaced in the very moment they are revealed), as a sort of game of hide and seek with the missing parts of objects that open them up to mystery.