Documenting the Divine: The Future of Sacred Objects in Museum Databases

Abstract

Religiosity as a modicum of meaning surrounding and within objects has raised ethical issues ever since people began collecting, especially as some of the first works of art were commissioned by religious practitioners or for religious purposes. In the twenty-first century, as curators and collections specialists grapple with the religious and cultural trauma surrounding the looting and unethical collecting of objects with inherent spiritual and sacred value, this article explores the implications of this value and meaning in our museum databases. How do museums care for objects that are themselves non-human living beings, spirits, and/or ancestors and how do they care for objects whose legacies of creation, contact, and engagement affect the ways in which they can be displayed or preserved? This article utilizes a case study of Catholic relics to explore how collections specialists catalog their value, both historical and spiritual, and how it affects the ways in which they are touched, treated, and housed.

Introduction

Museum databases, or Collections Management Systems (CMS), have been an integral part of maintaining museum records and thus title to museum collections. Not only do databases authenticate the provenance of a work of art, record loan and insurance information, and tie an object to its maker and cultural origins, databases are part of a network of museum documentation authenticating the value of a work of art. This article will cover guidance related to traditional, religious, and spiritual care of objects as an overview, as well as the current and prospective implications of integrating this information into museum databases, both to authenticate traditional and religious meaning and how this informs community care. The author has a specific interest in the care of religious, sacred, and spiritual objects, with years of ethnographic research experience related to Catholic devotionals (Cieslik and Phillips 2022). As a result, this article includes an overview of religious-affiliated cultural heritage institutions and museums about world religions, the development of traditional and religious care, the example of Catholic relics, and the possibilities of integrating aspects of their care into databases. This article aims not to be a comprehensive review of the past and present care of sacred, spiritual, and religious objects, but rather a conversation starter for professionals eager to acknowledge the sacred meaning of objects within their institutions’ collections.

A Brief Overview of Traditional and Religious Care

Presently, the museum field has addressed religion tangentially, mainly when it is interwoven with other sectors of history and culture. ¹ There are, however, a subset of museums which have delved into the topic of world religion from the early 1990s onward, including Glasgow’s St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art founded in 1993, Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art which hosted its first exhibition that same year, and New Taipei City’s Museum of World Religions founded in 2001. Other institutions were founded in specific affiliation with religious organizations, such as Orlando’s Wycliffe Discovery Center, Williamstown’s Ark Encounter, Petersburg’s Creation Museum, and Washington, D.C.’s Museum of the Bible. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, museums were increasingly pressed to address the political, social, and gendered dimensions of religion represented by the objects in their collections. As a result, new religious institutions are coming into being, such as the Center for the Understanding of Religion in American History, set to open its physical exhibit in 2024 at the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of American Religion set to open in Washington, D.C. in 2026.

As part of this push, museums are increasingly called to dissect the religious and spiritual meaning embedded within collection objects, as well as explore how religion itself has played a role in political, colonial, and socio-economic frameworks from past to the present. Despite this, museums are still cautious about discussing religion given its highly sensitive nature and therefore rarely address religion in their exhibit signage, label text, or in internal records like databases. In some cases, this is due to the misunderstanding that recognizing the religious and spiritual meaning and stakeholder-informed care of objects may affirm the legitimacy of the objects’ institutions. This is an understandable concern, as institutions like Ark Encounters and Museum of the Bible utilize historical objects to support a worldview consistent with their religious beliefs and in support of their religious institutions. However, there is still an imperative for public-facing museums to acknowledge how religion and spirituality has played a role in their objects’ creation, sale, and collection. To not do so would deny the objects’ meaning and power within their respective religious and spiritual communities, as well as the role of religion in colonial frameworks of museum collecting, especially fetishized and exoticized religious objects.

Right now, there exist general guidelines surrounding the care of culturally sensitive and sacred objects (Clavir and Moses 2018; Macuen 2020), but as the collections professionals the author spoke to note, these guidelines only serve as templates for more individualized care procedures informed by source communities. Consultations with source communities is an essential step not only to build relationships for community engagement but to acknowledge the communities which the museum has affected through ethical or unethical processes of acquisition. This is especially critical for communities to which the object still holds sacred value, and may require ongoing care (e.g., through ritual feeding, washing, or cleaning), and objects which the community would like repatriated back into their care for sacred and spiritual use. To elaborate further on what types of care communities may request and may need to be added to the database for long-term documentation and recognizing the value of the object to the source community, the author will speak generally to examples at specific museums without identifying specific communities, tribal governments, or religious institutions to maintain confidentiality.

At the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, like at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, culturally sensitive objects are often draped in muslin (instead of plastic so they can breathe) and stored in less frequented areas of collections storage (Taylor 2023; West 2019). Both institutions seek out tribal guidance on how to house, label, or handle objects. At the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, certain objects are requested to come in contact only with natural materials, be covered with red cloth, or be housed and stored in a specific location or orientation, similar to how the National Museum of the American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland houses objects together by community in alignment with the cardinal directions (Bryant 2023). At the Logan Museum of Anthropology in Beloit, Wisconsin, as at many other institutions, sacred care also includes ongoing ceremonies, such as the ritual feeding of objects, leaving offerings inside or near the objects, and hosting smudgings of sage in collections storage, galleries, or dedicated ceremonial rooms (Meister 2023). Several other institutions the author spoke with mentioned other procedures specifically about reducing contact with the object using boxes with breathable sides, fabric coverings, wrapping objects, or putting up signage about restricted drawers or areas in storage. This culturally sensitive care also extends to the past and present housing, storage, and display of human remains (Vawda 2019).

Specific communities may also request museum professionals follow guidelines prior to coming in contact with objects. For example, specific communities identify certain objects as to be handled by individuals meeting certain criteria such as gender; role as religious practitioners; people not menstruating; or those who have abstained from alcohol for at least three days. All of these guidelines require ongoing documentation and color or icon-indicated labeling systems. Most well-known of these is Local Contexts, an international initiative based in the United States, developed by Jane Anderson and Kim Christen in 2012 in partnership with communities, tribal archives, museums, libraries, and collecting institutions. Local Contexts creates and implements Traditional Knowledge Labels (TK Labels) and Collections Care Notices (CC Notices) so that Indigenous communities can control access to and regulate sharing of their cultural heritage and knowledge. Of particular importance to the topic of religious information in museum databases is the TK Secret/Sacred (TK SS), a label indicating that the material is traditionally not publicly available and therefore “letting users know that because of its secret/sacred status it is not, and was never free, public, or available for everyone at anytime” (Local Contexts, n.d.-a). Many institutions are working to add TK Labels and CC Notices into museum databases, both internal and publicly accessible ones, and to add Local Contexts’ new Collections Care Notices, developed in partnership with the National Museum of the American Indian, to the objects shelf or housing to alert staff and visitors.

While the diversity of religious and cultural communities prohibits the development of standardized sacred object care guidelines, outside of TK Labels that can cover general access, use, and handling restrictions, it is also necessary to “build into standard policies the need to be mindful of the non-traditional care (from a museum perspective) that may be necessary to be the steward of these items,” Taylor (2023), Curator of Collections at the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology explained to the author. This means disrupting the museum standard that objects are inactive, must be completely preserved, and separated from human contact, foregrounding how spiritual care is a key part of object safety, access (serving the museum’s publics), storytelling, and wellbeing. Taylor and Laura Bryant, Anthropology Collections Steward and NAGPRA Coordinator at the Gilcrease Museum, founded the Indigenous Collections Care Guide for this very reason with a specific chapter devoted to Spiritual Care. This guide, they hope, will serve as a framework for museum professionals to know what questions to ask and how to begin and maintain meaningful relationships with communities, tribal nations, and stakeholders. An important note is that this guide will not provide standardized care guidelines for every situation, despite the desire to standardize methods across the board, but encourage museums to develop object-specific care on a case-by-case basis.

This guide builds on the work of Alison Edwards, who previously worked at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions (Bedford 2005) and Kate Macuen, who both wrote about the care of culturally sensitive and sacred objects in version five (2010) and six (2020) of Museum Registration Methods. It also builds on the active work of Indigenous communities, like the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. This community created the NAGPRA handbook Finding Our Way Home, highlighting common care requests for culturally sensitive and sacred objects. These requests include that human remains be off limits to the public and be handled by only specific individuals, and that sacred objects should only be handled by individuals given permission by the community, tribal nation, or stakeholder group (Hemenway, Henry, and Holt 2012). Another important note found in this text is that videotaping or photographing certain objects may also be prohibited, another critical consideration for allowing/not allowing the addition of digitized object records, photography, 3D models, or videos into museum databases. It’s important to acknowledge that Indigenous scholars and scholars from marginalized religious and spiritual communities have been advocating for this specialized care and repatriation for decades, it is only now that museums are pushed to understand the importance of this care as part of decolonizing museums collections and the colonial religious frameworks within which the objects were collected.

Through community consultations, source communities may ask that museums do not include an object on a database or display it publicly on exhibition or loan. While some professionals may argue that this is counter to museums’ mission to hold objects in the public trust and make the histories of these objects publicly accessible, this argument seeks to disenfranchise the very people who were deprived of these objects and their own cultural histories because of colonialism and imperialist collecting. While museums are obligated to serve the publics, to deny requests to keep objects which traditionally and ethically belong to specific communities off display in exhibitions or online catalogs would deny the rights of cultural ownership and the museum’s obligation to serve publics that it has historically harmed through the unethical collecting of sacred and spiritual objects.

To end this section, it’s useful to return to the writings of Alison Edwards, previously working at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions (Bedford 2005) and Kate Macuen. Edwards (2010) identifies four main questions for consultations with source communities:

1. What objects may be displayed or used for educational purposes?

2. Are any of the objects essential to ongoing religious or ceremonial practices?

3. Are there recommendations for how objects should be housed?

4. Does the community wish to borrow objects for ceremonial purposes?

Macuen adds three more questions: Are there specific handling recommendations? Are there concerns or restrictions about object research or material testing? Does the source community wish for the objects to be returned to their care through repatriation? This last specific question is critical because as museums acknowledge and accept the spiritual, sacred, and religious power of the objects inside their collection, the ethical next step is their repatriation to communities to whom they have value and to which they may be used in rituals and ceremonies affirming and sustaining this power.

The museum may not have all the answers for their entire collection, meaning that some objects may have received collections care in the past that was inconsistent with community guidelines, but changing museum field-wide attitudes toward sacred guidelines is essential. It is about acceptance of traditional, religious, sacred, and spiritual care practices, and therefore awareness of traditional and sacred care practices and consultation with source communities, as an essential part of collections management. As Taylor (2023) explains, “without reviewing all parts of a collection with tribal representatives, a museum cannot know if they house and care for items with spiritual, sacred, or religious power.” It is not within a museum professional’s duties to identify that meaning or value, “it is on institutions to work with communities to understand collections and respect that identification when tribes make it” (Taylor 2023).

Sacred Object Care in Museum Databases

Including community care requests specific to religious, sacred, and spiritual objects in museum databases is complicated for a number of reasons. Often because the source communities request that access to objects be restricted, including these care requests in the database may make these requests and thus the object’s meaning and power available to more people than the community requests. In the case of the Logan Museum of Anthropology, Nicolette Meister, Director and NAGPRA Coordinator of the Logan Museum of Anthropology, explained that care guidelines for objects in their collections are not shared publicly, identified as “restricted” in the museum database, and the objects or material is not exhibited or included in online databases (Meister 2023). As a field, adding this information to databases is complicated further by the fact that there are other objects with sacred, spiritual, and religious power that is currently unacknowledged or unknown to museum professionals or may be associated with more than one source community, region, or religious or spiritual institution or organization which each may have different requests surrounding object care.

It’s important to recognize that museum databases have been utilized by religious organizations ever since these databases came to be. Due to the diversity of organizations and cultural heritage institutions that the database serves, Sara Van De Carr, President of museum database company PastPerfect Software, Inc. explained, “we do not have built-in fields to specifically capture religious affiliation, religious-specific care, public engagement etc.” (Van De Carr 2023). Some built-in fields are restricted to terms within authority files, such as object name which in the case of PastPerfect utilizes Nomenclature for Museum Cataloguing. Other examples include the Union List of Artist Names, which is often linked to artist, maker, or creator fields in databases like Gallery Systems’ Embark. The Union List of Artist Names does not indicate the religious affiliation of artists, and many individuals and institutions are not included in this list due to lack of notoriety although the list is continually updated.

Utilizing built-in fields is critical for database interoperability, especially if the museum may transfer data between different databases, update the databases, or share with other institutions, but sometimes this is not enough for organizations. As Van De Carr (2023) noted, “if the standard built-in fields do not meet the needs of the organization, the organization has the option to create custom fields to capture their unique data.” These custom fields may change into built-in fields with subsequent database software updates or through specific plug-ins offered by the firm Local Contexts. This is especially important because more than one source community may provide guidance for one object, and they may not agree. In these situations, documenting what guidance was shared and how this guidance was put into effect (using the database as a record of the object’s past and present spiritual care) is essential for institutional transparency and recognizing that communities may disagree on care, but all guidance is being documented and recorded by the museum for institutional memory.

Part of recording and implementing this guidance involves attaching specific notices about an objects’ physical and digital access and distribution (such as Traditional Knowledge Labels and CC Notices produced by Local Contexts) to individual object records in databases. According to Ashley Rojas, Web Developer at Local Contexts, the Local Context labels and notices are integrated into the Mukurtu CMS and PastPerfect at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine (Rojas 2023). Local Contexts also have label and notice integration into other databases but not in a way that directly links them to handling, access, and use. These databases include ArchivesSpace (with an added Plugin), Mukurtu, Manaaki Whenua, OpenTEK, Fortepan, and Walata App. Other initiatives to integrate TK labels into museum documentation are added directly to authority files and metadata standardization systems, such as developing guidelines for adding TK Labels into DataCite, an organization that manages and shares Digital Object Identifiers for research products (Local Contexts, n.d.-b).

While the TK Labels are used intentionally by different organizations like the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research the American Philosophical Society (TK Open to Collaborate), Wellcome Collection (TK Open to Collaborate and Attribution Incomplete), and University of Tasmania (TK Attribution, TK Outreach, TK Verified, and TK Culturally Sensitive), these labels represent an institution, organization, or collection’s intentional notation of TK issues. Local Contexts is pushing for a more field-wide integration of these TK Labels as built-in fields in databases, so that museums are prompted to consult and collaborate with source communities and think critically about what documentation and care guidelines exist for objects and what remains unidentified by community stakeholders. Taking stock of what objects have specific care guidelines, or TK Labels, sheds light on what other objects have not been examined by community stakeholders and how communities for whom these objects have meaning are actively harmed when handling, access, and use guidelines are not followed, specifically when they are not acknowledged in museum databases.

Relic Example: Database Documentation in Practice

Relics are one example of material religion, as embodiment of religious power within the Roman Catholic Church and within other traditions that worship and pray to saints recognized by the Church. According to the Instructions “Relics in the Church: Authenticity and Preservation,” approved by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome in 2017, relics of the Blesseds and of the Saints (individuals recognized officially by the Catholic Church) may not be displayed for veneration without a proper certificate of the ecclesiastical authority who guarantees their authenticity (Congregation for the Causes of Saints 2017). ² This Congregation is responsible for (1) the canonical recognition of a person as Blessed or Saint, (2) the extraction of fragments from the individual’s human remains and the creation of relics, and (3) the translation of the urn and alienation of the relics, as well as regulating the transfer of relics (Congregation for the Causes of Saints 2017). This is complicated even further by the classification of relics into classes based on their relationship to the person’s remains, as well as by the status of the Blesseds and Saints that will may change over turn. For example, the human remains of Servants of God and Venerables, whose beatification or canonization are in progress (a process which can take years) do not have the same care guidelines as official relics, discussed below.

There are three classes of relics. Significant or first-class relics refer to the body or notable parts of the bodies or the sum total of the ashes of a saint. According to the “Relics in the Church,” significant relics are “preserved in properly sealed urns and are kept in places that guarantee their safety, respect their sacredness and encourage their cult” (Congregation for the Causes of Saints 2017). Non-significant or second-class relics are little fragments of the person’s body (along with objects that have come in direct contact with the body). These relics are “preserved and honored with religious spirit, avoiding every kind of superstition and illicit trade” (Congregation for the Causes of Saints 2017). Finally, third-class relics are objects which have come in contact with non-significant relics. This classification system based on contact with the person’s remains complicates museum collections care, both because housing and display materials that come in contact with first-class or second-class relics are considered sacred to members of the Catholic Church and thus require special care, and because The Congregation for the Causes of the Saints prohibits anyone from receiving relics that will not be available for public viewing or pilgrimage, as in the case of relics currently held inside storage facilities, and public contact. The Congregation prohibits anyone from selling relics and for the relics to be held in private collections and therefore not accessible to people who consider the objects sacred.

Currently, the largest collection of relics resides in a church adjacent to the Vatican, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, but a substantial number of relics or reliquaries, often a metal or glass chamber or casket where relics are stored, reside in museum collections. The author has encountered several museum professionals who feel uncomfortable about noting class status of relics in museum databases for fear that doing so will validate the religious institution within which these objects have value, but by avoiding this recognition—that is, not creating a specialized field for this information if relics and/or reliquaries are part of the museum collection, the museum harms the religious community to which these objects have value and denies the histories and meanings of the objects themselves. This is a good example where it’s important for museums to create a platform or committee where museum staff can voice concerns about validating object meaning and sacredness with language specific to the religious institutions; dialogue about ethical stewardship is vital among all museum staff, and these conversations in committees, formal meetings, and departments should also be recorded and added to the object record in the database. In these situations, using a collection of labels with language specific handling, access, housing, and digital reproduction (instead of specific to relic status) would be useful (with the relic status information held in another notes field) because it centers how this meaning impacts object care and display. Keeping relic status information in a separate notes field, along with community, nation, or institutional guidance, also ensures that this information is recorded as guidance around object care (such as the beatification of a saint) as it may change and museum field-wide language surrounding object care changes.

Just like many other sacred objects in museums today, relics were never supposed to be held by a non-religious institution and especially not one which prohibits direct contact with and veneration of relics, especially if the relic is housed in storage or only accessible in the online collection. Berns (2016) has written about how glass cases serve both as barriers and channels of venerating medieval Christian relics while at the same time erasing the history of religious practices surrounding these objects. Geisbusch (2016) elaborates further on how museums regulate contact with relics and how this affects visitor engagement that differs from engagement with the object in the period or community in which it was created. Wangefelt Ström (2019) posits three ways in which meaning is transformed in museums: in which (1) the original identity or histories of engagement are killed, (2) the object can hold within it multiple identities depending on the person viewing it, or (3) the identity is based solely on how the object is used, which as Berns and Geisbusch point out differs from original relic use. Expounding further on Berns’s and Geisbusch’s arguments that museums change the way people engage with sacred objects by their methods of display, often in opposition to engagement within their source communities, recording the original methods of engagement—and how they impact present use, access, and handling in museum databases—supports the second method of religious transformation posited by Wangefelt Ström. In this way, original methods of engagement and present community care guidelines are acknowledged inside the museum setting, along with a duality of use coexisting in the object.

The example of a relic is also critical because it demonstrates the importance of addressing religion in exhibit labels and in online collections. Relics are the product of an institution which played an active role in colonialism and itself amassed a collection of sacred objects from impacted communities (Guzmán-Valenzuela 2023; Walsh 2022). Addressing the religious meaning of these objects, and by extension their relationship with the Catholic Church, ³ is addressing the object’s relationship with colonization, religiously-motivated genocide, and power regulation. At the same time, the museum ownership of relics, objects which they are prohibited from owning by the Church, may deny the initial purpose this object was created to serve and may present problems related to the storage and display of human remains. Therefore, including the relic class level and religious institution/community of origin in the database is a key part of addressing both the complicated and problematic histories of religious institutions and communities represented in the museum’s collection.

Acknowledging the cultural and religious meaning of these objects does not align a museum with the religious institution within which these objects have value, nor does it send a message that the museum supports that institution or community, instead it validates the existence of the institution, nation, or community to which the object had and continues to have meaning. It is through documenting the sacred and spiritual dimensions of objects that museums recognize these histories, how and when an object was created, for whom it was created, and how meaning for and care of objects change through the recording of community, nation, or institution guidance into databases. By not recording this community guidance, this object meaning, and thus ignoring these histories, museums fail to recognize how religion has played a critical role in social, political, and economic movements. Museums do not remain “religiously neutral” by ignoring these histories; rather, they continue to reinforce a hegemonic Judeo-Christian worldview that harms peoples practicing outside of Judaism and Christianity and denies how this worldview has contributed to systems of oppression.

The Future of Religion in Museum Databases

As this example highlights, acknowledging and documenting the religious, sacred, and spiritual meaning of objects and their community requested care and repatriation is a critical part of information management in museums. This extends to museum databases, where access to these guidelines (or sometimes prohibiting access to these guidelines and objects) helps the museum prevent harm to source communities whose sacred objects are held within the collection. As this article has covered, integrating this information into museum databases will likely be different for each institution but there are tangible steps that the museum field as a whole and individual institutions can take to limit harm to sacred objects, by enforcing traditional, religion, and spiritual care guidelines developed through community consultation. These include, but are not limited to:

• Assess the museum’s collection (What sacred objects are held by the museum and what source communities do they represent?) and gain a present understanding of community-requested care for sacred objects

• Identify where these care guidelines are recorded. Is there a centralized file folder? Is this information held in each individual object file? Is this information integrated into the museum’s database and if so, where?

• If this information is not in the museum database or in the database in a tangential notes field, or noted in different fields for each object, how can the museum standardize how it documents this information? Can it create a custom field where this information can be recorded, and is there a way to use a widely used system of recording handling, access, and use guidelines like Local Contexts (as well as other systems that foreground object care) that would increase interoperability if objects were transferred?

There are also concrete steps that the museum field can take to better approach the topic of religion. These include, but are not limited to:

• Further integrating Traditional Knowledge Labels and Collections Care Notices (and other types of object care, display, and distribution notices) into databases through build-in fields, including in major databases like The Museum System, PastPerfect, eMuseum, and EMu. It’s important for these label and notice systems to be financially accessible to all institutions to broaden their use.

• Increasing pressure on institutions to engage (only if source communities chose or feel comfortable to do so) with source communities and financially compensating community stakeholders that contribute to collections care

• Supporting initiatives like the Indigenous Collections Care Guide and uplifting Indigenous scholars and scholars of marginalized religious or spiritual communities writing and speaking about this topic

• Increasing education about traditional, sacred, and spiritual object care into museum studies, museum ethics, and collections management programs

• Making formal statements as a field through a larger organization, like the American Alliance of Museums or International Council of Museums, about the harm caused by museum’s acquiring and holding sacred objects

The most important goal is for museums and the museum field as a whole to begin to address the histories and cultures of religious communities and institutions in their spaces, something which because of its taboo status in American and Western European cultures has resulted in ignoring this part of an object’s meaning and identity and actively causing harm to religious and spiritual communities by not caring for the object with respect and community-informed care. Religious, sacred, and spiritual care can only prevent harm within the institution which actively acknowledges it possesses sacred objects and understands the problematic ownership of their objects, and even further, museums cannot take the steps to implement these care policies and document and curate religious, spiritual, and sacred without thinking about their databases and how this information will be recorded and regulated.