Review: Museums of World Religions: Displaying the Divine, Shaping Cultures, by Charles D. Orzech
In Museums of World Religions, Charles Orzech takes readers on a brief global tour of five unique museums of religion, focusing on how the curation of religious objects in each museum shapes public perceptions about religion in general and world religions in particular. Orzech not only introduces re...
| Published in: | Nova religio |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Californiarnia Press
2023
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| In: |
Nova religio
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| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In Museums of World Religions, Charles Orzech takes readers on a brief global tour of five unique museums of religion, focusing on how the curation of religious objects in each museum shapes public perceptions about religion in general and world religions in particular. Orzech not only introduces readers to purpose-built museums of world religions but also shares critiques of each of the five museums reviewed. He offers suggestions on how religion is materially displayed as he considers the agency of religious objects.Museums of World Religions consists of seven chapters split into two parts. Part one, "Displaying the Divine: Religious Objects and Comparison," includes the book’s first two chapters. Chapter 1 introduces readers to religion and world religions with a quick overview of the historical development of the concept of world religions, while chapter 2 provides an in-depth discussion about animism and agency of objects. The purpose of these discussions is to offer background to the reader for better understanding Orzech’s suggestion that museums of world religions may better structure their displays as to "alert the visitor to the social, ideological, and relational dimensions of the objects displayed" (34). Orzech also provides a useful summary of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory and Tim Ingold’s meshwork theory, both of which come up often in discussions of object agency and museum narratives in the second part of the book. |
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| ISSN: | 1541-8480 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nova religio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1525/nr.2023.26.4.112 |