The long Good Friday

MOCRA is extending the exhibition Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art through May 16, 2010.

Now, this may strike the liturgically inclined as a bit of a disconnect, since we are now into the Easter season. What sense is there in stretching out an exhibition that focuses so squarely on the events of the Passion?

While the works in Good Friday focus on themes such as suffering, injustice, and death, they also explore complementary themes of healing, redemption, and renewal. In other words, the experience of Easter is implicit in all of these works, and even explicitly hinted at in several of them, such as this painting by Nick Boskovich titled Emmaus: Rose of the Passion (Requiem for Caravaggio):

Nick Boskovich, "Emmaus: Rose of the Passion (Requiem for Caravaggio)", 2007.

So, although at first blush it may seem jarring to come see a show titled Good Friday during the Easter season, we believe that the works in the show offer important perspectives on the deeper meaning of suffering and redemption.

Furthermore, one of the most-commented upon aspects of this exhibition is the invitation it offers to visitors to allow the works to become gateways to contemplation, meditation, and even prayer. Close to 100 visitors made the exhibition part of their Good Friday observance last week. As a former chapel, MOCRA’s architecture itself fosters an atmosphere of calm and reflection. We don’t believe the practice of this sort of reflection with art is bound by time or season.

Now you have a couple more weeks to explore this rich exhibition for yourself. Find out more about Good Friday here.

– David Brinker, Assistant Director

The principle at hand

Today I am at MOCRA. This is my 42nd day of work in row.* I am tired, but happy. This type of work in the arts is incredibly important to me. The Cosmic Tears exhibit  is a good one and Michael Byron will be speaking about his work on November 15th.

A few weeks ago, two men entered the museum and began looking around. The taller of the two asked me if I was an artist. I said yes. He said that he and his friend were both former students of Michael Byron. We then began discussing the two statements that Byron wrote to go with exhibit:

Cosmic Tears

The Universal Principal upon seeing its Creation, realized

the potential humanity could exert on the world. The very

thought caused a torrent of the tears – one for each man, woman,

and child. Each tear contained all the joy, pain, and sorrow each

person’s life would hold. To this day a cosmic tear is shed at the

birth of each child. It is the womb of our psyche. Our task is to shape that tear into

Meaning.

And on the opposite wall it reads again with a tiny change:

Cosmic Tears

The Universal Principle upon seeing its Creation, realized

the potential humanity could exert on the world. The very

thought caused a torrent of the tears – one for each man, woman,

and child. Each tear contained all the joy, pain, and sorrow each

person’s life would hold. To this day a cosmic tear is shed at the

birth of each child. It is the womb of our psyche. Our task is to shape that tear into

Meaning.

"Michael Byron: Cosmic Tears," at MOCRA, Fall 2009.

We talked about the definitions of principal and principle. We wondered about the words that were obviously purposefully capitalized. We then concluded that there was something intentional about the isolation and capitalization of “Meaning” at the end of the statements. We decided nothing concrete, but the conversation was enjoyable.

To me, I see a hint of Buddhism when I think of the bittersweet birth of a child. It is a happy occasion, but there is also sadness for me. I know the potential suffering that awaits the child. Buddhists wish to end human suffering and it seems that with each birth inevitably come more suffering and pain.

I am happy at the coming birth of my little girl. I am also worried about the pains life holds for her. Is this a cosmic tear? Or is this a cause of the tears? I think I see what Bryon is saying here…

– Bob Sullivan, Museum Assistant

* Not all of them at MOCRA. Bob has a busy teaching schedule as well! — ed.

Reflecting on “Good Friday”

It is gratifying to report that an article I wrote appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue of Aquinas Institute of Theology‘s Signatures magazine. (In the interest of full disclosure I must note that I am presently in graduate studies at AI.) You can find the article online here (it begins on page 9 of the PDF file).

I was invited to write on the intersection of art and religion, drawing on my experiences working at MOCRA. Had I been asked a year prior, I would probably have written generally about the museum’s mission and the ground we’ve covered in our exhibitions. But coming on the heels of MOCRA’s Good Friday exhibition, I knew just where I wanted to go with the article.

“The Presence of God in Art” describes the power that Good Friday held for several groups who engaged with the art as a form of theological reflection and prayer. Over the course of almost 15 years I have given presentations to dozens of groups of all ages and from all walks of life. Often the observations made, and the discussion they spark, can be quite revelatory, both about the work of art at hand and about the people making the remarks. However, there was a marked difference with the group discussions that took place with Good Friday.

An explicit invitation to approach the art in an attitude of meditation or prayer seemed to unlock a door for a number of our visitors who, even in a group setting, were willing to make themselves quite vulnerable in sharing their reflections about the art. These discussions also left me feeling more exposed than usual in my role as docent/moderator, both in receiving the visitors’ observations, and in leaving my accustomed “neutral” stance regarding the work to express more openly some of my personal responses.

I invite you to read the article and share your responses. For instance,

• If you saw the Good Friday exhibition, did you experience responses similar to those I describe in the article?
• Does the idea of approaching art this way leave you feeling ambivalent or even opposed?
  
• Could (or should) something like this take place in a “public” art museum?
  
• Or do MOCRA’s particular mission and setting on a university campus give us latitude to do things other institutions can’t safely attempt?
• Given that Good Friday has a clearly Christian point of departure, and that the groups I described were coming from a standpoint of Christian faith, is this sort of exhibition and approach to art transferable to art from other faith traditions?

You might reply to this post, or you can e-mail me through MOCRA’s website. If I receive enough interesting responses, I’ll incorporate them into a future post.

– David Brinker, Assistant Director

We’ve been busy: Part 1

It’s been another busy stretch at MOCRA. The response to Good Friday has been tremendously positive, with a higher-than-usual number of groups scheduling visits. We’ve also been busy with two projects:

MOCRA's "Good Friday" booklet

The first, supported by a grant from the VOICES project at Saint Louis University (funded by the Lilly Endowment), is a booklet of reflections on the artwork in Good Friday for use by visitors who wish to approach the exhibition in an attitude of meditation or prayer. The booklet takes a different approach from our wall texts/didactics. While those provide relatively “neutral” information about the iconography of the work or the artist’s expressed intent, the booklet explicitly puts the works in a (Christian) faith context. You can see a sample page on the MOCRA website.

This is something we’ve been interested in trying for a while now — bridging art appreciation with theological reflection and catechesis (religious education) — and this exhibition presented an excellent opportunity to experiment. So far feedback has been encouraging.

The challenge ahead will be to develop similar resources for future exhibitions (which may not have such clearly religious themes) and for visitors of other faith traditions. Also, we will be exploring what sorts of activities are “appropriate” in a museum setting–either sponsored by the institution, or simply permitted?

We’d welcome feedback from our blog readers. If you would like a copy of the booklet, send us a message with your snail mail address and we’ll send one your way.

[contact-form]

–David Brinker, Assistant Director