Output details

Art of Faith: 3500 Years of Art and Faith in Norfolk

There were two project teams. One consisted of staff at Norwich Castle, led by Dr Andrew Moore, Keeper of Art. The other was at the University of East Anglia, led by Dr Margit Thøfner as principal investigator. The UEA team was responsible for academic research, the Castle team for curatorial work. The exhibition itself and the catalogue were thus co-authored between the institutions whilst the academic anthology was mainly the work of the UEA team.

The project was designed to answer one core question: what is the relationship between religious artefacts and the locality where they are made and used? Our hypothesis was that religious artefacts take a substantial part of their agency from the locality in which they are made or used. To provide a solid, factual basis for exploring this, the project was focused on one case-study: the making and use of objects for spiritual purposes in Norfolk, an area with a deep history of religious diversity.

The UEA team identified, researched and compiled a long-list of over 500 suitable objects. Then, with the Castle team, we selected 150 objects for the exhibition. These were researched in more detail, focusing on material, contextual, artistic and devotional properties; this research fed directly into the exhibition lay-out, labelling and catalogue. It also influenced the choice and range of articles in our academic anthology.

The exhibition constituted a laboratory for testing our theory. It is often claimed that the display of devotional artefacts in gallery spaces has a de-contextualising or deadening effect. We found the opposite. Even so, our conclusions are not straightforward. Spiritual artworks do indeed take some of their powers from their locality. But this is not a given. It depends on the specific circumstances and contexts pertaining to such artefacts.