For as long as humanity has had gods, people have painted, sculpted, sung, danced, carved, woven, performed, and sketched to connect with them. The desire to touch the divine with our own creations is one of the few universal constants across history and geography.
That is why the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is presenting Living with the Gods: Art, Beliefs, and Peoples, October 27, 2024-January 20, 2025. The massive exhibit is the capstone of the MFAH’s centennial celebration and will cover a remarkable 11 galleries. The collection includes more than 200 pieces from across 3,000 years and every continent except Antarctica.
The exhibit will include this Hanukkah lamp.Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Instrumental in bringing this collection to life is Neil MacGregor. A former director of the National Gallery in London, MacGregor created a phenomenal BBC radio series and authored a book (both also called Living with the Gods) to detail the way humans have used art to honor and placate our deities.
“Neil MacGregor’s acclaimed 2017 BBC radio series and book brilliantly chronicled this enduring form of human expression,” Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, said in a statement. “We are honored that he brought that perspective to Houston, making it visible through objects chosen from our own collections as well as some truly exceptional loans.”
The pieces on display are both modern and ancient. MFAH has arranged them thematically, focusing on depictions of water, the cosmos, animals, and more. Among the most notable are a Pentecostal altarpiece on loan from the Padro, Madrid that depicts the resurrection of Jesus; a silver urn used by Maharaja Madho Singh II, an Orthodox Hindu, to drink only water from the Ganges River when he traveled overseas for the coronation of King Edward IV; and Bedu masks from Africa’s Ivory Coast used during funeral dances and purification rituals.
“This exhibition is about how people everywhere have made beautiful things to negotiate their place in time and in the world; and how we use works of art to think about how we relate to each other,” MacGregor added. “Putting art into that context allows for a different conversation. In museums, many great objects can lose their original purpose, which was spiritual. An exhibition of this kind can give that purpose back to them, allowing a new and deeper approach to great and familiar works.”
Many of the items in the exhibition rarely leave their home countries for display, showing how remarkable the organization of such a collection is. It is a unique opportunity for Houstonians to see the art and tools used to reach across the void and communicate with something transcendental.
Ticket information can be found on the MFAH website.
