Saturday, October 16 at 4:00PM EST -  “Displaying the Dharma: Buddhist ‘Art’ and the Modern Museum,” Pamela D. Winfield
BMCM+AC (120 College Street, Asheville NC) | Zoom
Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute, a partnership between BMCM+AC and UNC Asheville

This talk examines the tensions and tactics involved in exhibiting Buddhist visual culture in modern museum spaces. It first critically examines the ideological divide between sacred and secular that reduced powerful Buddhist icons into aesthetic objects within 19th century Euro-American collections of Asian “art.” However, it then also examines how Japanese Buddhist temples, in particular, persevered through periods of persecution, preservation, and paradox, as they ultimately installed temple “treasure halls” (hōmotsukan) that replicated the very kinds of western-style museums that had pillaged their temple treasures a century and a half previously. If the 19th century transferred the temple out to the museum, then the 20th century transferred the museum back into the temple grounds. The result is that both American and Japanese museums need to be understood as hybrid spaces, where the supposed boundaries between sacred and secular are porous and continually negotiated by diverse audiences.

This presentation is free + open to all