Living with Gods, people, places and worlds beyond by Jill Cook

This book was published alongside the British Museum’s eponymous exhibition, but as a slim volume, just over 60 pages This is essentially a picture book (which is not a criticism, I like pictures), with brief notes similar to the captions that would have gone alongside the objects in the actual exhibition. (I presume at more full blooded catalogue wasn’t produced to leave a suitable gap in the Market for Neil MacGregor to publish his 500 page book also associated with exhibition later this year).

I was sorry not to get the chance to go to the exhibition, as the engagement with belief as the starting point is unusual. The National Gallery in 2009 had an exhibition “The Sacred Made Real” on Spanish Religious Art and the British Museum in 2011 had an exhibition “Treasures of Heaven” which brought together various Medieval European Christian objects, both of these did explore belief to some extent, however my sense is that the starting point was a coherent group of artworks which just happened to be religious in origin. But with Living with Gods it is a completely diverse group of objects brought together only by the fact that they share a religious significance.

In the introduction Jill Cook writes “perhaps we should review the species name sapiens meaning wise or clever and consider the alternative Homo religious, the species that tries to adapt to the complexities of the world and our emotions by calling upon nonmaterial forces?” That is a bold statement, and as someone of faith an attractive one, but…

That “but” need a lot of unpacking.

The exhibition brings together a wide range of objects, and with them a wide range of beliefs, and as the British Museum absolutely should do, those beliefs are presented in a non-judgemental way. Within the book, and therefore I expect the exhibition, objects are not grouped by religion but by cross-cutting themes, sometimes to contrast different responses to the same issues, but more often drawing out the commonality of response across seemingly diverse religions.

Although I didn’t go to this exhibition, I did go to the other two I mentioned above and I found them challenging experiences because they were made up almost exclusively of objects of devotion, but objects removed from a devotional context. In some ways the “sensitive” treatment made it worse, for The Sacred Made Real many of the gallery spaces had been arranged in chapel like ways to help experience the art work in something like its original context. So should my response be to a historical artwork or to the Passion of Christ?

Of those objects not in the British Museum’s own collection the majority were on loan from the State Museum for the History of Religion, St Petersburg which has a “complicated” history as much of its collection came to it through the repression of religion within Soviet Russia. This means we are asked to engaged with the beliefs associated with the object despite the fact that the particular object in question might very literally have been ripped from the believer’s hands. While there is an exploration of the ways that the atheist states actually expresses many “religious” tendencies there didn’t seem to be an acknowledgement of the dark side of those regimes' role in supplying material for this exhibition.

I have recently written about the British Museum’s Regarding the Dead about how the Museum manages its holdings of Human Remains and there are many common, if unacknowledged, ethical issues, some of these religious objects could have than greater cultural power and significance than an individual’s Human Remains. Thinking back to the “Treasures of Heaven” exhibition, it included a significant number of Human Remains, as many of the objects were reliquaries in which their relic was still present. The key principle that Regarding the Dead upholds, ie Human Remains should never be treated as an object, was not manifest on my visit to “Treasures of Heaven”. It was a fascinating exhibition but left me with a deep sense of unease.

Clearly the format of this book (booklet?) did not allow the exploration of these issues. I am pleased that the British Museum has opened the can of worms, but I am not sure their response is completely successful.