a tribute to glencairn museum
Last year, Crispin Paine, Honorary Lecturer at the
Institute of Archaeology at University College London
in the United Kingdom, visited the Glencairn Museum
in Bryn Athyn. He is one of the foremost authorities
in the world on the interpretation of religious objects
in museums. He was highly complimentary of the
Glencairn Museum and said its goal of becoming a
leader in the interpretation of religion is firmly within
Crispin Paine
reach.
After lecturing at Yale University last fall, he spent several days at
Glencairn, where he consulted with the museum staff and addressed a group
of Bryn Athyn College students and faculty. Glencairn staff also accompanied
him as he toured several local museums, including the National Christmas
Center & Museum and the Biblical Tabernacle Reproduction at the Mennonite
Information Center.
He shares his thoughts in a fascinating essay, Glencairn Leads the Way!
Religion in Museums, which you can read in the Glencairn Museum News at
www.glencairnmuseum.org.
It begins with: “The Academy of the New Church, a Swedenborgian
educational institution, founded what seems to have been the first ever
museum of religion – at least museum in the modern sense. The museum
of religion in Glencairn traces its origins to 1878, when leading New Church
members John Pitcairn and William Benade set out on their Middle East and
European travels, from which they were to return with a collection of artifacts
for the Academy’s museum.”
The article concludes with: “Too often, museums don’t let the religious
role and significance of their objects show. They treat them as art, or history,
or sometimes science, and their fascinating back story is suppressed. It was
because I got so interested in the way museums change the meaning of the
objects they acquire that last year I published Religious Objects in Museums:
Private Lives and Public Duties. In this short book I try to uncover the various
different roles religious objects can take on when they come into a museum.
“I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with this – simply that it
would be valuable for museums also to help visitors understand their religious
meanings – as Glencairn does.”
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The Rev. Brad Heinrichs, Executive Vice President for the General Church in
Canada, reported in the January issue of the New Church Canadian on a recent
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