Encountering Buddha in Museums: Modern Expressions of an Ancient Tradition

Religious scenic areas in China are widely perceived as endeavors by the government to boost local economies. While these sites are doubtlessly driven by economic pressures, I suggest that other tacit motivations may be at play. This paper uses Bourdieu’s frameworks of field and capital, and Tony Bennett’s (2006) concept of “civic seeing” to interrogate two diametrically different features at the Jiuhuashan Dayuan Buddhist Culture Park that was established by a state-owned enterprise in 2013 below the renowned Buddhist mountain Jiuhua. The first feature, a monumental Kṣitigarbha (Dizang) statue, suggests that the project is a statement of superioritybestriding other Buddhist sites at Mount Jiuhua and colossi everywhere else. The second feature, a Mount Jiuhua miniature in the park’s museum, evinces the containment of the mountain’s temples under the aegis of the state. Future studies of Chinese religious scenic areas should account for nuances of rivalry in a religious marketplace.

The presentation will analyze two recent exhibitions on Buddhism held at Ryukoku Museum in Kyoto, Japan, and at the Musée royal de Mariemont in Belgium. While the two museums have a different religious/secular affiliation, the presentation will identify in both exhibitions a shared view on the origins of modern displays of Buddhist objects that revises univocal narratives of modernization as secularization. The exhibition in Kyoto shows how Buddhist communities actively appropriated the modern tool of museum display for Buddhist proselytization purposes in the early Meiji period (1870s). The one in Belgium reveals the link between European scholarship on Asian religions, freemasonry rituals, and collection of Buddhist objects in late nineteenth century Europe. Through an analysis of the multiple temporalities implied at these exhibitions, the presentation will contribute to recent scholarship by complicating the narrative of museumification as secularization and by stressing the agency of Buddhist communities in this process.

The exhibition “Oh! Kokuhō: Resplendent Treasures of Devotion and Heritage” (April 19th-June 15th, 2025), marks the 130th anniversary of the Nara National Museum. The exhibition features numerous national treasures (kokuhō), many of which have been periodically displayed in the museum since its founding in 1895. Taking this exhibition as a starting point and Hōryūji’s Kudara Kannon (one of the Buddhist images on display) as a primary focus, this paper will examine the variety of encounters numinous national treasures have had with people and objects as they travel between national museums, temple halls, and temple museums in Japan. The paper builds upon prior Japanese and English-language scholarship on Japanese national museums, Japanese temple museums, and conceptions of fine art versus religious images in Japan; it will also be informed by fieldwork and grounded in archival materials including temple treasure surveys, tourist guidebooks, and travel diaries.

This presentation focuses on the exhibit, Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration (Japanese American National Museum/USC Shinso Ito Center of Japanese Religions and Culture), as an interesting case study in the larger conversation on Buddhism and museums. Unlike the more common experience of Buddhist objects presented in a museum setting, this exhibit featured objects and practices created by immigrants over time as their experiences in a new environment prompted them to evaluate their ritual and spiritual needs. Through an examination of key objects and display strategies, this presentation contributes to the broader conversation of how museums and exhibits featuring Buddhism expand the understanding of changing interpretations of Buddhism, and how these interpretations affect the beliefs and practices of Buddhism.

In 1842, American collector Nathan Dunn’s Chinese collection was exhibited at Hyde Park Corner, London. Buddhist art constituted a substantial part of the exhibition, featuring three colossal Buddhas, a Chinese pagoda, temple architecture, and even Buddhist priests. Through visual and iconographic analyses of Chinese Buddhist art in the exhibition catalogues, I pose the following questions: How did the Hyde Park exhibition interpret Buddhist art? What attitudes toward Buddhism, and by extension, China, did the Hyde Park exhibition reflect? How did this exhibition impact other international exhibitions and European artistic depictions of Chinese Buddhist art? I argue that the British curator removed Chinese Buddhist art from its ritual context, inventing novel iconographies and pseudo-ritual scenes. This exhibition reinforced a narrative of China as backward while asserting Britain’s imperial superiority. Such representations, influenced by early Jesuit travel books and Chinese export art, shaped later European art and international exhibitions on China.