Good Friday returns to MOCRA

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is currently presenting Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art. This is an encore showing: Good Friday was originally presented in Spring 2009 as the second of two exhibitions celebrating MOCRA’s 15th anniversary. The exhibition includes works by over 30 artists of diverse backgrounds who have used the events of the day of Jesus’ death as inspiration for their own reflections on such themes as faith, suffering, loss, compassion, and unconditional love. The selected works are drawn from the MOCRA collection and works on long-term loan, and employ a wide range of media from painting and sculpture to fiber arts.

Sr. Helen David Brancato. "Crucifixion - Haiti," 1997. MOCRA collection.

It may come as a bit of a surprise—it did to me—that Good Friday was one of our best received exhibitions ever, given that the exhibition represented a bit of risk-taking on MOCRA’s part. We are committed to an interfaith exploration of how contemporary artists engage the religious and spiritual dimensions in their work. Although our track record of over 35 exhibitions demonstrates how ample our vision has been, it would be easy for people unfamiliar with us to dismiss a show with such an overtly Christian title as being sectarian. Quite to the contrary.

For instance, at least four works in Good Friday specifically treat the theme of “Pietà” (Mary holding her dead son after he is brought down from the cross). They include a large wooden cage, an abstract marble sculpture, and an homage to a famous 15th-century work, by artists from Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish backgrounds respectively, and a frenetic etching by Salvador Dalí. Taken together, these works represent a wide spectrum of understandings and interpretations of an age-old theme.

Furthermore, we experimented with ways of inviting people to approach the work from a standpoint of contemplation, or even prayer. Is it  appropriate to encourage this sort of thing in a museum? This was a topic taken up in the MOCRA conference “Art and the Religious Imagination” in March 2009. Dr. Gerald Bolas, former Director of the Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, discussed the challenges and sensitivities for a state university art museum in displaying art and artifacts associated with a particular religious tradition, but also the opportunities for community engagement. The role of various sorts of museums as stewards and interpreters of sacred materials is also explored in the book Stewards of the Sacred, edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan and Alison Edwards.

The situation at MOCRA is a little different. First, we are a museum at a private Catholic university, and an interfaith outlook is built into our mission statement. Furthermore, Good Friday does not include liturgical objects or objects tied to particular communities. Still, how do we help people feel welcome to seek a faith experience, without putting any undue pressure on those who simply want to look at the art? One response was through a booklet of meditations on the art of Good Friday which is offered to visitors for self-guided reflection. Another was the development of group visits, facilitated by MOCRA staff, which incorporate discussion of the art from a spiritual or faith perspective as well as an art appreciation perspective.

I’ve discussed both of these approaches in posts on the MOCRA blog (here and here). In one of those posts I raised some questions, which I have refined a bit since then:

• Does the idea of approaching art this way leave you feeling ambivalent, or even opposed?
• Could (or should) something like this take place in a “public” art museum? Why or why not?
• Do MOCRA’s particular mission and setting on a private Catholic university campus give us latitude to do things other institutions can’t safely attempt?
• Good Friday has a clearly Christian point of departure, and the groups I described were coming from a standpoint of Christian faith. Is this sort of exhibition and approach to art transferable to art from other faith traditions?

We invite you to visit MOCRA and the Good Friday exhibition, and consider these questions for yourself.

Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art continues through April 25. On March 28, MOCRA Director Terrence E. Dempsey gives a lecture titled “The Wounded Body of Christ and the Modern Social Conscience.” The lecture is free and open to the public. Find more information by clicking here.

Day With(out) Art at MOCRA - 12/1/09

December 1, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Day With(out) Art (DWA). Over those twenty years, this annual day of mourning and action has metamorphosed from emphasizing loss (signaled by removing artworks or draping them, or dimming the lights in galleries) to encouraging the creative energy and insight that art can bring to a devastating and demoralizing situation. As the Visual AIDS website notes:

… Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative project in which an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part.

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) has participated in DWA regularly since 1994. In addition to highlighting particular works of art, three times we have hosted and helped organize observances involving members of the wider arts community.

Adrian Kellard, "The Promise," 1989. Courtesy of the Estate of Adrian Kellard.

This year, MOCRA observes DWA by exhibiting The Promise, by the late Adrian Kellard, a rising artist in 1980s New York. His large-scale carved wood block panels evoke both medieval shrines and the woodblock prints of 20th-century German Expressionists, but their bright colors and folk-art quality make them accessible to a wide range of audiences. The Promise riffs on images of St. Christopher, a legendary giant who unwittingly carried the Christ child across a river. The image expresses endurance and perseverance in the midst of suffering. Its enigmatic text, “I will never leave you,” seems to assert love, hope, compassion, and loyalty. It is an especially poignant message when we consider that Kellard’s own life was cut short by AIDS. He died in the fall of 1991 at the age of 32.

The Promise was included in the 1992-93 international traveling exhibition From Media to Metaphor: Art about AIDS, and in the 1994 exhibition Art’s Lament: Creativity in the Face of Death (organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

MOCRA is pleased to be able to share The Promise with St. Louis audiences for this year’s Day With(out) Art. MOCRA will have the work on display beginning Tuesday, December 1 through December 13. Find more information here.

MOCRA’s current exhibition, Michael Byron: Cosmic Tears, also continues through December 13. Although not directly connected to HIV/AIDS, this exhibition does engage the ambiguity of suffering and the challenge it poses to us as a fact of our human existence. I suspect that Byron’s works speak to many of our visitors of the ways in which we can creatively elicit meaning out of all of life’s experiences, both the joys and the tears.

In whatever fashion makes sense to you, we hope you will join MOCRA in observing World AIDS Day and Day With(out) Art.

• Art Organization: David Brinker, MOCRA

Michael Byron exhibition opens at MOCRA

Cosmic Tears, an exhibition of paintings by internationally recognized artist Michael Byron, opens at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) on Sunday, September 13, 2009 with a free public reception from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. The exhibition continues through December 13, 2009. (Unfortunately, Mr. Byron cannot attend the opening, but he will be giving a talk about his work on Sunday, November 15, 2009, at 2:00 p.m., followed by a reception).

Michael Byron, Cosmic Tears 12, 2003.

The earliest work in the Cosmic Tears series dates from 2003. While works from the series have been shown in other exhibitions, this is the first time they have been displayed as a body of work. In these evocative paintings, Mr. Byron explores the relationship of the individual to the universal. The works are based on a text by the artist that meditates on the inevitable mix of emotions that accompanies the act of creation; pain and joy together elicit a “cosmic tear” that is the “womb of our psyche.” Yet the paintings themselves attest to the potential of art to “shape that tear into Meaning.” The abstract works simultaneously suggest both microcosmic and macrocosmic perspectives, and evince a quiet, reflective quality.

Mr. Byron is Professor of Painting at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In his distinguished career he has exhibited throughout the United States, as well as the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, and Mexico. He was selected for the 1989 Whitney Biennial. His work is included in many public collections including the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen (Rotterdam), and the Tamayo Museum (Mexico City).

MOCRA thanks the artist and Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, for their assistance in assembling this exhibition.

Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Exhibition admission is free, though there is a suggested donation of $5, or $1 for students and children. More information is available by calling 314-977-7170 or visiting MOCRA’s website.

• Art Organization: David Brinker, Museum of Contemporary Religious Art

Am I just imagining it, or is this religious?

One of the most frequently asked (and unasked) questions visitors to the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art have is, “What makes this religious art?” Others are, “What’s the difference between religious and spiritual?” and, “Can’t anything be spiritual for someone?”

MOCRA has spent the past fifteen years exploring these questions, not with theoretical conjectures, but by way of concrete example. From Australian Aboriginal art and Alvin Ailey to contemporary Chinese and Latin American photography, from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and contemporary illuminated manuscripts to Andy Warhol’s “Silver Clouds” – with each new exhibition we consider another way in which contemporary artists are in dialogue with the spiritual dimensions of life, using the full vocabulary of contemporary artistic production.

Now we invite you to a free public conference that will explore some of these questions. “Art and the Religious Imagination” will feature a panel of distinguished museum directors and theologians discussing the roles that secular and religious art museums can play in the presentation of art with spiritual and religious content. A panel discussion and audience Q/A will follow the individual presentations, so if you have an interest in this topic – or even if you’re skeptical about the whole idea of contemporary religious art – please come and add your voice.

The talk takes place in Xavier Hall Theatre on the SLU campus, and we’ll have a brief reception afterward next door at MOCRA, so you’ll have a chance to see our current exhibition, “Good Friday.” You can find a list of the panelists and the titles of their talks on MOCRA’s website. Please join us on Sunday, March 29, from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. and add your voice to the proceedings.