FRANCE: European seminar for curators – “Religious heritage in museums, uses and contextualization”

12-17 December, France

The seminar will offer French and foreign professionals presentations on the topic of “religious heritage in museums: uses and contextualization” in the form of field visits, exchanges and discussions, with time reserved so that all of the participants can present their institutions and approaches.

The seminar will be based on a series of visits to sites and meetings with the people who run them. It will take a multi-faceted approach to the heritage involved: religious heritage in museums. How can a public interest institution, i.e. a French museum, transmit secular messages about religious heritage? How should we speak about religious and sacred phenomena? What anthropological definition should we give to religious matters and sacred objects? What is a religious or sacred object or fact, what prerequisites must be given to the public? How can we present practices linked to objects taken out of their context on a sensitive topic like religious practice? Can devotional uses subsist or coexist within a museum institution? If so, how?

The seminar is designed as a sequence of modules focusing on various forms of museums that are mainly devoted to religious heritage.
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