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Curating Buddhism: Reimagining Buddhist Statues in a Museum

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Curating Buddhism: Reimagining Buddhist Statues in a Museum CURATING BUDDHISM: REIMAGINING BUDDHIST STATUES IN A MUSEUM AND TEMPLE SETTING by DERRY FRANCES JAMESON A THESIS Presented to the Department of the History of Art and Architecture and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts September 2015 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Derry Frances Jameson Title: Curating Buddhism: Reimagining Buddhist Statues in a Museum and Temple Setting This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture by: Associate Professor Charles Lachman Chairperson Assistant Professor Akiko Walley Member Assistant Professor Mark Unno Member and Professor Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2015 ii © 2015 Derry Frances Jameson This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii THESIS ABSTRACT Derry Frances Jameson Master of Arts Department of the History of Art and Architecture September 2015 Title: Curating Buddhism: Reimagining Buddhist Statues in a Museum and Temple Setting This thesis considers whether a Buddhist statue in a museum context can be both aesthetic and devotional. By reexamining the relationship between a devotional object, its surrounding space, and its viewer, this thesis will suggest how a museum gallery, though not a consecrated ritual space, can still potentially be a place for spiritual engagement akin to a religious sanctuary. Through a comparison of Gallery 16 of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and Mengjia Longshan Temple, Taipei, Taiwan as a case study in terms of their spaces and the movement of people within the space in relation to the objects, this thesis will consider how Buddhist statues may continue to exist as spiritual objects and works of aesthetic appreciation without losing their past as devotional icons, and I will do this by applying Victor Turner’s concepts of liminality and the liminoid. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Derry Frances Jameson GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Arts, History of Art and Architecture, 2015, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History of Art, 2011, Southwestern University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Chinese Art History Buddhist Art History Fine Art Prints PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Digital Image Cataloger, Digital Scholarship Center, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2013-2015 Assistant Conservator, Los Angeles Paper Group, Los Angeles, 2011-2013 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Art History, 2014-2015 Eric G. Clarke Scholarship, 2014 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank Professors Charles Lachman, Akiko Walley, and Mark Unno for their assistance and advice in the creation of this thesis. I would like to thank my family, particularly my parents and grandparents, for their guidance and love. I would also like to thank Jernej Razen, for his unconditional support and constant encouragement. Special thanks are due to my classmate and friend, Lindsay Long, who has been my sounding board. And finally, I’d like to thank my art history cohorts at the University of Oregon for their fellowship. vi For my grandfather, Robert Q. Keith, who loved to learn. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Notes ................................................................................................................ 3 II. BUDDHIST ICONS TO “BUDDHIST ART” ........................................................ 5 Notes ................................................................................................................ 6 III. PRESENCE OF A BUDDHIST ICON AS LIMINALITY ................................... 8 Notes ............................................................................................................... 14 IV. MENGJIA LONGSHAN TEMPLE ...................................................................... 15 Notes ............................................................................................................... 22 V. ASIAN ART MUSEUM OF SAN FRANCISCO. ................................................. 23 Notes ............................................................................................................... 28 VI. COMPARISON OF TWO GUANYIN STATUES ............................................... 30 Notes ............................................................................................................... 35 VII. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 36 Notes ............................................................................................................... 39 APPENDIX: FIGURES .............................................................................................. 40 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 48 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Courtyard, Waterfall and Dragon Gate of Longshan Temple, Taipei, Taiwan ..... 40 2. Drum Tower and Main Hall, Longshan Temple, Taipei, Taiwan ......................... 40 3. Gate and altar in front of the Main Hall, Longshan Temple, Taipei, Taiwan ....... 40 4. Layout of Longshan Temple, Taipei, Taiwan ........................................................ 41 5. Guanyin, Main Hall, Longshan Temple, Taipei, Taiwan ...................................... 42 6. Map of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, California ................................ 43 7. Layout of Gallery 16, Chinese Buddhist Art Gallery, Asian Art Museum ............ 44 8. Right side of Gallery 16, Chinese Buddhist Art Gallery, Asian Art Museum ....... 45 9. Left Side of Gallery 16, Chinese Buddhist Art Gallery, Asian Art Museum ........ 46 10. Guanyin, Avery Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum ................................... 47 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The exhibition of the permanent collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, organized by culture, roughly chronologically, begins on the building’s third floor. The last gallery on that floor (gallery number 16), consisting mostly of sculpture, is dedicated to Chinese Buddhist art. Although it is a quiet and contemplative space, a historian of art or religion or a practicing Buddhist may feel that the original context of these works, that of an organic and vibrant temple, is not reflected in the museum setting. While Western art museums have been acquiring Buddhist art since the late nineteenth century, the works were primarily valued for their aesthetic appeal.1 Today they are often display as objects not too dissimilar from, for example, a beautiful celadon vase (which is almost equally displaced from its initial place of use). Buddhism scholar T.G. Foulk has written that in comparison to a temple setting, “when [he] encounters such works in a museum, [he] cannot help but see them as things somehow severed, incomplete, and out of place.”2 Foulk also reveals a desire that many with highly specialized knowledge of Buddhist art have probably felt in a museum context “to reconstruct in [ones] imagination the world in which they were first produced, used and understood.” 3 Anyone who is familiar with the original devotional setting of a Buddhist icon may experience a similar desire and attempt to imagine the original context as he or she walks through a museum gallery. However, even if a devotional object in a museum setting is separated from its original context, is it necessarily true to say, as Foulk does, 1 that it is somehow “incomplete?” Is the “use” and “understanding” of such devotional objects solely contingent on its environment? Is it not so that, to the eye of a believer, Buddhist statues hold just as much “use” – or more significantly, efficacy – as they did in the “world in which they were first produced, used, and understood?” While conversely, to the eyes of a nonbeliever, Buddhist statues may have very limited “use” or “understanding” even in the original devotional setting. Questioning Foulk’s comment on the museum space, as well as my own inclination to envision an “original” setting of some sort for a Buddhist work of art in a museum gallery, this thesis reexamines the relationship between a devotional object, its surrounding space, and its viewer. More specifically, this thesis compares Gallery 16 of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and Mengjia Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺), Taipei, Taiwan as a case study in terms of their spaces and the movement of people within the space in relation to the objects in it. I will do this by applying Victor Turner’s concepts of liminality and the liminoid. Liminality refers to an in-between state of existence where something is neither one thing nor another. Liminality for Turner is specifically related to religious ritual and thus part of a collective cultural cycle or rhythm. Liminoid objects, however, sit on the margins of normative culture.4 One-way in which Turner explores the differences between liminal and liminoid is the sphere in which they function. In terms of Buddhist statues, in a temple setting they are part of a culturally understood devotional practice, functioning
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