Amanda Stem ARED 750004/24/2014

Exhibit of Exvotos: From Sacred Ground to Sacred Grove

Introduction

“…a museum of art is in essence a temple.” (Zeller, pg.30)

This hypothetical exhibition is an extension of my interest in Mexican

exvotos. In class I have so far introduced the exvoto in a concrete manner by

focusing on its history, function, and its scope of context. I have designed this

exhibition to expand on the concrete ideas into the abstract by trying to replicate

the exvotos in their natural habitat. That is, I want to display the exvotos in much

the same way as you would see them displayed in an actual chapel. In their natural

condition exvotos are a testimonies of faith by common people of Mexico to be

viewed by common people in a common place of worship. Hundreds or even

thousands of these tiny squares of faith are dedicated en masse on one wall of a

chapel creating one huge mosaic of devotion. It is an overwhelming aesthetic and

educational experience I propose brining to a museum gallery.

The Specific audience and the Personal, Sociocultural and Physical Contexts

Audience

The target audience for this exhibit is the Mexican American and/or Mexican

immigrant. Demographics are shifting. “Individuals born outside the United States

are now 12.5 percent of the American population, with 83 percent of those coming

from either Latin America or Asia…” (Falk, Dierking, pg. 89) Minority populations

are gaining in numbers and, “museums are continuing to seek new audiences, with

cultural diversity as an important goal.”(Henry, pg. 81)

Personal Context

Keys to attracting the Mexican American or immigrant audience are interest

and relevance. “In short, visitors generally select whether or not to visit museums

based on their prior interest in a museum’s subject matter and/or the type of

experience they seek…and then utilize their specific interests, along with their

entering identity-related motivations, as lenses to decide what aspects of the

museum to focus on…”(Falk, Dierking, pg. 93) Many Mexican immigrants, and some

Mexican Americans have encountered the exvotos at some time in their past and

therefore may have prior knowledge to encourage their interest. They may be

seeking an experience that fosters a sense of pride and nostalgia, and the subject

matter is an identity-related motivation. Also worth considering is that the interest

may not be solely in the subject matter but in the fact that it is in a museum to begin

with. They may simply find it novel that a museum would choose to exhibit a

common object they grew up with.

Sociocultural Context

“As other major institutions in our society…have declined in importance, the

role of museums as interpreters of culture has increased.”(Hein, pg. 9) Regardless of

how commonplace they are in Mexico, they are not in the United Sates where so

many Mexican immigrants have re-rooted. It may not surprise my reader that the

Mexican culture we experience here in Athens Georgia, and many other similar

communities in the southeast, is not wholly or authentically representative of the

culture they left behind. It is partial or spotty, and typically dressed up to sell more

margaritas or burritos. Many Mexican American children are born into a society

where most believe Cinco de Mayo really is Mexican Independence Day.

I have often wondered how Mexican immigrants teach and pass down a

heritage that is so removed from their daily experience. Those with prior knowledge

about this particular piece of Mexican heritage could facilitate learning in children

and relatives that would not encounter them otherwise. As Falk and Dierking state

in chapter seven, “Adults frequently take on the roles of teachers, facilitators, or

group leaders during museum visits and use a variety of strategies to facilitate,

including helping children identify the important features of an exhibit, offering

explination, making connections to prior experiences and knowledge and asking

questions.”(Falk, Dierking, pg. 153)

Finally, exvotos are not being produced in the numbers they once were and

so their existence is finite. Though this hypothetical exhibition is designed to be

temporary, it could stir up the kind of awareness that would inspire active collection

for permanent display. As Hien points out in Learning in the Museum, museums have

“become active preservers of (often vanishing) cultures, not just passive collectors

of cultural artifacts.” (Hein, pg. 11)

Physical Context

I found Falk’s and Dierking’s discussion about conveying concrete

information versus abstract ideas especially relevant for this hypothetical

exhibition.(Falk, Dierking, pg. 113) However, rather than concrete versus abstract, I

see my exhibition of exvotos possibly, ideally, accomplishing both. What I believe is

essential to accomplishing both in one exhibit is to display them as they are

displayed naturally–as they are in a chapel–accompanied with the relevant and

meaningful contextual information presented in a very modest, even reverential

way. “Opportunities to relate works to the culture in which they were produced are

exploited by few museums; works are visually presented in isolation without a

frame of reference or context in which they can be situated and understood.”(Eisner,

Dobbs, pg. 10)

I have visited an exhibition of exvotos organized and produced around the

concrete information they can provide. That concrete information is “affected in

each case by geography, climate, history, economics, and politics, in sum, by

everything that gives people their own special character.” (Luque, Beltrán pg. 71)

Specifically, the exhibition was of Mexican exvotos depicting the experiences of

Mexican immigrants in relation to the Mexican American border (Jorge Durand).

The information was undeniably concrete, but the exhibition took on the typical

one-piece-at-a-time presentation, isolating one exvoto from the rest, and therefore

eliminating the sublime quality of mass devotion. That is, it was too concrete.

On the other hand, the way exvotos are typically displayed within a chapel

can be a stupendous, maybe even overwhelming, or bewildering experience for

those not already familiar with them. It comes without the concrete information in

the form of labeling or other interpretive material an outsider might require for a

better understanding and maybe a more meaningful experience. It can be too

abstract. Contextual information “…is particularly important the further the work of

art is removed from our cultures and our times.” (Henry, pg. 91)

How to reconcile? I would follow the advice of Falk and Dierking and start

with the concrete because, “Although it is understandable and admirable that

museums…are committed to communicating big ideas to the public,…Museum

exhibitions and interpretive materials are very effective when they begin with

concrete information; concrete understanding is an important precursor to abstract

ideas.” (Falk, Dierking, pg. 113)

Because exvotos have the characteristic of being produced according to

prescribed aesthetics and compositions, much of the concrete information applied

to one can be effectively applied to all or most. For example, they are almost always

painted on industrial tin cut into sheets of about the same size. They all serve the

similar devotional function. In varying degrees, they all display a simplistic style of

painting. They all have text typically including names, dates, and location. Therefore,

there is no need to include all of this information on an individual level. All of this,

including information on their origin and history, can be provided in a brochure,

catalog, or along an exterior or entry wall. The less signage within the exhibit the

better as I believe it would detract from the experience.

Translation, however, is necessary. Not only would promotional and

educational information, typically presented in English, need to be provided in

Spanish, but also the Spanish text inscribed on the exvotos themselves should be

translated to English. I am not suggesting every exvoto in the exhibit be translated

but only a select few. I will explain this in more detail further along in this text. In

summary, substantial information about exvotos can be presented with minimal yet

effective signage.

It will not be as easy to convey the abstract idea attached to such a powerful

display of mass devotion, but I will attempt it through the overall design of the

exhibit, by displaying it as naturally as possible and by a grouping method. Every

collection has its best pieces, and exvotos, though intrinsically individual, can

capture themes such as illness, crime, sports and so on, and so on, and so on! The

manner in which I would group this exhibition is by first finding sufficient

examples–out of hypothetically hundreds or thousands–of a number of depicted

themes. Then I would select around half a dozen of the best examples from each

theme to be translated and displayed in groups separately from the remainder of

the collection. This, I hope, would illustrate the scope of content matter as it is

presented in an individual way; each exvoto shows just a flash, or still frame of an

extraordinary experience from one person’s life– an experience that one person

considered miraculous!

The remainder of the collection would be grouped together in a chaotic mass;

the condition in which they might be found outside of the museum. I would display

them one on top of another, and without organization. I want this group to be so full

and random that they loose themselves within themselves until the group becomes

a whole; a single wall of faith. The abstract idea is, as I stated in the introduction, the

one being constituted of the many.

The Nuts and Bolts

Have you ever walked into a cathedral and been knocked off your feet by the

power of the sanctuary? You feel it as soon as you walk into the nave. This is the

feeling I want to get from my own exhibit of exvotos. Therefore, I would design this

exhibit according to the aesthetic associated. I envision a single room that has

dimensions similar to a chapel or church. It would be somewhat narrow and tall. A

good example from the Georgia Museum of Art would be the Phillip Henry Alston Jr.

Gallery. I would hang the bulk of the collection, the chaotic wall of faith, on the wall

opposite to the entry so that it is the first thing the visitor sees, like the sanctuary in

a cathedral. I would make sure that every inch of the wall, from floor to ceiling, is

covered with exvotos. I would display the themed groups on evenly spaced panels,

or possibly even within two Plexiglas panels, along the side walls. I would size the

panels and arrange the exvotos in such a way that the viewer may be reminded of

stained glass windows. Beneath the arrangement I would add modest signage with

the translations. The translations would occupy one sign and would be coded by

number. In the center of the gallery I would place benches reminiscent of church

pews in a nave with room to walk on either side as well as down the middle. Each

bench would have a catalogue containing all the concrete and abstract ideas equally

represented in English and Spanish. The intended viewing path would be right down

the middle to the greater wall but visitors would be able to move comfortably (and

within ADA standards) around the benches which would absorb some of that empty

space that no one feels comfortable turning his/her back to. I anticipate visitors will

backtrack to the greater wall after visiting the smaller group panels because the

panels will likely add meaning to the greater wall. The colors of the wall would be

warm like the stuccoed interior of a chapel or church. The lighting would be warm

and candle-like and would come from above and below. I would open the exhibit on

the sixteenth of September and run it through December twenty-seventh.

How to get exvotos here

New Mexico State University has one of the largest collections of exvotos in

the country. There are also several private collectors here in the United States. Also,

as Ramón A. Gutiérrez points out in his article, Sacred Retablos: Objects That

Conjoin Time and Space, “Vast numbers of votive offerings were, and still are, left

daily at popular Mexican shrines. Regularly, shrine custodians remove large

numbers of them to make room for the new ones that constantly arrive. Votive

offerings removed from the shrine are either discarded or sold to religious-goods

vendors…”(pg, 34) Though exvotos are constituting smaller and smaller percentages

of the votive offerings being left and then discarded, this is still a source worth

consideration.

How to get the audience here

Collaborate! The Georgia Museum of Art could work with numerous other

entities at the university, including the Spanish department, and the anthropology

department. They could help with translation difficulties and encourage visitor

participation in and among the departments themselves. Off campus, there are

several places of promotional opportunity, for example, there are many Mexican

restaurants and grocers. Catholic churches may count many Mexican American

members among their flocks, and last but not least, there is a Quinceañera shop on

Broad Street!

In conclusion

In Silent Pedagogy: How Museums Help Visitors Experience Exhibitions,

Elliot W. Eisner and Stephen M. Dobbs state plainly that, “Works of art do not speak

for themselves.”(Eisner, Dobbs, pg. 8) I highlighted and circled it with exvotos in

mind. Exvotos spoke to me the very second I saw one of them. The meaning was

literally on the surface in text and testimony, and metaphorically below in devotion

and dedication. “A viable model for museum teaching…needs to account both for

what transpires in words and what transpires beneath and beyond words.”

(Burnham and Kai-Kee, pg. 64)

Bibliography

Articles

Burnham, R. & Kai-Kee, E. (2011). Gallery Teaching as Interpretive Play. In Teaching

in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (pp. 59-66). J Paul Getty

Museum: Los Angeles

Eisner, E.; Dobbs, S. (1988) Silent Pedagogy: How Museums Help Visitors Experience

Exhibitions. In Art Education, July, (pg. 6-15).

Hein, G.E. (1998). Introduction and Brief History of Museum Education. In Learning

in the Museum (pp. 2-11). Routledge: New York, NY

Guitiérrez, R. A. (2001) Sacred Retablos: Objects that Conjoin Time and Space. In Art

and Faith in Mexico; The Nineteenth-Century Retablo Tradition (pp. 31-38).

University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque

Luque, E. & Beltrán, M.M. (2001). Powerful Images: Mexican Exvotos. In Art and

Faith in Mexico; The Nineteenth-Century Retablo Tradition (pp. 69-76).

University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque

Zeller, T. (1989). The Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Art Museum

Education in America. In N. Berry & S Mayer (Eds.). Museum Education:

History, Theory, and Practice, (pp. 10-89). Reston, VA: National Art Education

Association.

Books

Falk, John H., and Dierking, Lynn D. Dierking. The Museum Experience Revisited. Left

Coast Press Inc., Walnut Creek, CA, 2013.

Henry, Carole, The museum Experience: The Discovery of Meaning. National Art

Education Association, Reston VA, 2010.