Religion and Museums - a basic reading list
General
Beier-de-Haan, Rosemarie and Marie-Paule Jungblut, eds. 2010. Museums and Faith. Luxembourg: Museé d'Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg.
Buggeln, Gretchen, S. Brent Plate and Crispin Paine, eds. In press. Religion in Museums: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.
Capurro,Rita 2013. Musei e OggettiRreligiosi: Arte, Sacro e Cultura Religiosa nel Museo. Milan: Vita E Pensiero.
Claussen, Susanne. 2009. Anschauungsache Religion: zur Musealen Repräsentation Religiöser Artefakte. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clifton, James. 2007. 'Truly a Worship Experience? Christian Art in Secular Museums'. Museums - Crossing Boundaries. Res 52, Autumn.
Fraser, Jemima W. 2004. ‘Museums, Drama, Ritual and Power: A Theory of Museum Experience. PhD thesis, University of Leicester.
Hughes,Amanda M. and Carolyn H.Wood. 2010. A Place for Meaning: Art, Faith, and Museum Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
O’Neill, Mark, 1996. ‘Making Histories of Religion’ in: Gaynor Kavanagh (ed.) Making Histories in Museums. London: Leicester University Press.
Paine, Crispin (ed.), 2000. Godly things: museums, objects and religion. London: Leicester University Press.
------2013. Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties. London: Berg.
Sullivan, Lawrence E. and Edwards, Alison (eds.), 2004. Stewards of the Sacred. Washington: American Association of Museums.
Whitehead, Amy. 2013. Religious Statues and Personhood: Testing the Role of Materiality London: Bloomsbury Press.
'World Religion' museums
Bräulein, Peter J. 2006. The Marburg Museum of Religions. Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. 3(3), November, 285-287.
Campbell, Alison. 2007. Instigating Change: Investigating the Meaning(s) of Religious Objects in St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. MA thesis, University of Alberta, Edmonton.
Hout, Guus van den. 2007. Museum Catharijneconvent, the Museum for Christian Art and Culture of the Netherlands on the Verge of a New Era. Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. 4(1), November, 437-440.
Kamel, Susan. 2004. Wege zur Vermittlung von Religionen in Berliner Museen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft [Studies of the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, the Museum für Europäische Kulturen, Berlin, and St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow.]
Kelly, Alison. 2005. St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow. Material Religion 1 (3), 434-435.
Koutchinsky, Stanislav. 2005. St Petersburg's Museum of the History of Religion in the New Millennium. Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. 1 (1), March, 154-157.
Maclean, Mark. 2005. Chaitanya Jyoti, the Sai Baba Museum. Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. 1 (2) July, 300-301.
Orzech, Charles. 2015. “World Religions Museums: Dialogue, Domestication, and the Sacred Gaze.” In Bruce M. Sullivan, (ed.) Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces. Bloomsbury. (2015), pp. 133-144
Wilke, Annette and Guggenmos, Esther-Maria. 2008. Im Netz des Indra: das Museum of World Religions, sein Buddhistisches Dialogkonzept und die neue Disziplin Religionsästhetik. Berlin: LIT.
Royal, Jean-François. 2007. Protecting and Interpreting Quebec's Religious Heritage: the Museum of Religions at Nicolet. Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. 4(1) March, 153-154.
Particular faiths in museums
Davis, Richard H. 1997. Lives of Indian Images. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gahtan, Maia Wellington, 2012. Churches, Temples, Mosques: Places of Worship or Museums? Chiese, Templi, Moschee: Luoghi do Culto o Museo? Florence: Edifi Edizioni Firenzi.
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. 2007. 'Our Gods, Their Museums': the Contrary Careers of India's Art Objects. Art History 30 (4) September.
Junod, Benoît, Georges Khalil, Stefan Weber and Gerhard Wolf, eds. 2013. Islamic art and the museum: approaches to art and archeology of the Muslim world in the twenty-first century. London: Saqi Books.
Minucciani, Valeria. 2012. Religion and Museums: Immaterial and Material Heritage. Turin: Allemandi.
O’Hanlon, Michael, 1990. Paradise: Portraying the New Guinea Highlands. London: British Museum Press.
Paine, Crispin. 2010. Militant Atheist Objects: Anti-Religion Museums in the Soviet Union. Present Pasts 1, Feb. Available at:
Roque, Maria Isabel. 2011. O Sagrado no Museo. Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora.
Shaw, Wendy M. K. 2002. 'Tra(ve)ils of Secularism: Islam in Museums from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic'. In The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Politics and History edited by Derek R Peterson and Darren R Walhof. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Sullivan, Bruce, ed. 2015. Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces: Exhibiting Asian Religions in Museums. London: Bloomington.
Tythacott, Louise. 2011. The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Visitors and religion in museums
Bouquet, Mary and Nino Porto. 2005. "Introduction." In Science, Magic and Religion: the Ritual Processes of Museum Magic, edited by Mary Bouquet and Nino Porto. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Duncan, Carol. 1995. Civilizing rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. London, Routledge.
Howes, Graham. 2007. The Art of the Sacred: an Introduction to the Aesthetics of Art and Belief. London: I. B. Tauris. [Chapter 3 reviews visitor reaction to 'Seeing Salvation']
Michel, Patrick. 1999. La Réligion au Musée: Croire dans l’Europe Contemporaine. Paris: Harmatan. [Analysis of visitor comments at St Mungo's Museum, Glasgow]
Conservation & Collections Care
Clavir, Miriam. 2002. PreservingWhat is Valued: Museums, Conservation and First Nations. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Flynn, Gillian A. 2001. Merging Traditional Indigenous Curation Practices with Modern Museum Standards of Care.Available at
Crispin Paine & Charles Orzech, June 2016