Religion in the Museum

Religion has returned to the stage of public debate. This is also true of museums and exhibitions. In recent years, there has been a significant diversification and opening of this topic. Museums seem to increasingly see themselves as places of encounter and debate on the topic of religion. At the same time, religion has come to be viewed as an everyday practice and cultural action, as well as an area of conflict. The aspiration for inclusion is met with a heterogeneous audience: potential visitors are both non-religious and clearly affiliated with a particular denomination, members of minority religions, as well as those of ‘majority religions’—and the same is true, incidentally, of those who design exhibitions and educational programmes. What does this mean for the way in which we deal with the topic of religion today? What socio-political roles—between inclusion, knowledge transfer, and conflict moderation—do public museums play here? And what forms of awareness raising are needed? The workshop will attempt to map the heterogeneous field of religion in museums—between public and clearly denominational institutions—with a specific look at Vienna. On excursions to museums and other cultural organisations of various religions, we will experiment, among others, with analytical methods used in interreligious anti-discrimination training.