On the artification of the sacred in museums: between theater and the sacredness

Abstract

From the anthropological perspective, extending the notion of performance from the arts and the ritual context to virtually all forms of human action, different kinds of museums present different performances involving both an actor and the audience. This paper, aiming to study the museal performance in the French case, investigates the processes of artification of religious objects in museums, taking into consideration two case studies: a visit to the Écomusée d'Alsace, where religion is associated with the arts and folk traditions to evoke the local identity; and the study of the short-term exhibition Mãori. Leurs trésors ont une âme, at the Musée du quai Branly, in Paris, in which some kind of self-musealization is experienced, with sacred objects from the maori culture.