Although they like to call themselves temples of art, most museums have shed their religious purpose and become secular malls crammed with objets d'art. But the word museum once denoted a "seat of the Muses," the nine Greek goddesses who inspired artists, musicians, poets and scholars. It's to this semantic root that Dusseldorf's museum kunst palast is returning with "Altars: Art to Kneel Before" (until Jan. 6), an exhibition of shrines and altars from religious communities, sects and cults in 34 countries.
The show is intended to rekindle the debate on the relationship between art and religion. "If we are really serious about globalization, we must respect the frames of reference of non-Western artists too," says French curator Jean-Hubert Martin, the new museum's director. "And in many cases, the frame of reference is religion." Martin's influential 1989 show at the Centre Pompidou, "Magicians of the Earth," was one of the first exhibitions to present "primitive" and Western contemporary art side by side.
Most of the 68 structures on display-including Buddhist temples, gaudy African syncretist and Caribbean voodoo shrines, Christian altars, a ceremonial pavilion from a Burmese spirit-possession cult and even a mysterious megalithic shrine from the "sea people" of tiny Rano island, in Vanuatu-were expressly created for the Dusseldorf show by priest-artists and ceremonially consecrated on site. Many of them are also in daily use. Incense wafts through the cool museum air, candles flicker under the soft halogen lights and fresh offerings of food and flowers are laid at many of the altars.
Western visitors to the kunst palast can't fail to be amazed by the diversity of religious fervor. While death and the divine may often inspire believers with awe, it can also be cause for joyful celebration and laughter. Take the gorgeously colorful Mexican Altar for the Dead. Traditionally erected from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2-the Da de Muertos, coinciding with All Souls' Day-it invokes the ghosts of deceased relatives and friends with their favorite foods, flowers and candles. The altar, created by four Mexican artists and dedicated to their colleagues around the world, consists of a large collection of merrily grinning death's heads and imaginatively costumed skeletons in all shapes, sizes and substances; some are even made of icing sugar. According to the worldview of the ancient Aztecs, which still survives in Central America, death was not the end of life but only a phase in its cycle.
When objects from different cultures and creeds are juxtaposed-an ornately painted Russian-Orthodox altar from Germany, for instance, is set beside a plain palm-leaf-and-timber construction used by the isolated Asurini tribe from Brazil's Amazon region-the contrast is especially powerful.
The exhibition fails, however, to provide enough video installations with information on the altars' spiritual and social context. More background would have led to a greater understanding of the shrines' aesthetic value and underlying religious meaning. The more exotic exhibits -like the bizarre Korean car altar with its sacrifice of cakes, fish and a pig's head stuffed with cash-cry out for explanations of their respective "frames of reference." As it is, "Altars: Art to Kneel Before" is a timely reminder that religion and art have always been intertwined, either to reinforce or contradict one another.