Page - 38 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/02

38 | Celica Fitz and Anna Matter www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/2, 37–51 graduated in art history and religious studies in Marburg. her primary research foci are exhibiting in theory and practice, contemporary art and visual culture, material religion, and transformation processes in contemporary religions in Germany. anna Matter is a research associate at the department of the study of religion at the Philipps University of Marburg. she studied cultural studies and the study of religion at the Philipps University of Marburg and co-curated the exhibition SinnRäume. her research focuses on contemporary religion and material culture and religion, as well as on commemorative culture in Germany and eastern europe. reLiGioNs iN MUseUMs aNd exhiBitioNs Museums and exhibitions play a significant role in mediating issues of social relevance. exhibitions that examine religion are a prime opportunity for pre- senting (and at the same time constructing) often little-known concepts and ideals to an interested public. Such museum projects involving religion have been discussed intensively since the beginning of the 21st century, culminating in the realization that presenting religions in museums requires particular forms of mediation.1 That said, few institutions exhibit material objects on the basis of concepts taken overtly from the religious studies canon. Crispin Paine noted that a neutral representation of religious concepts is seldom an explicit part of the curatorial mandate. although since the 1980s anthropological approaches have ensured that minorities are increasingly being heard and discussed, the diversity of contemporary religious culture is rarely shown.2 he notes, if my friend gives her Guan yin statuette to a museum, it is likely to end up displayed (if at all) as an illustration of Chinese religion … But it sits on her bedroom “altar”, alongside the Buddha figure and the crucifix, and plays and has played a crucial role in her spiritual journey through Catholicism, Zen Buddhism and Anglicanism into a personal mixture that works for her. Unless one day – improbably – a museum in- terviews her and collects these figures, this example of religion as it is actually lived (in the early third millennium by millions in the developed world) will be forgotten.3 A religious studies approach to the exhibiting of religious objects can be found in exhibitions curated by the Museum of religions (religionskundliche Sammlung) in Marburg, which opened in 1927. The first objects in the collection were donated by the founder of the museum, Protestant theologian and early religious scholar Rudolf Otto (1869–1937), who had obtained most of them dur- ing his travels in asia in the 1920s.4 in his collection, otto tried to establish a 1 Paine 2012, 4–9. 2 in describing this diversity of religious practice as syncretism, Paine underlines the ties and forms of reception that lived religion can draw from a variety of sources; see Paine 2013, 17–22. 3 Paine 2013, 22. 4 Runge 2017, 155–158.