Opening Reception: Friday, October 9, 2009, 5-7 PM “Baptists in Burma,” features art and artifacts that highlight the development of Denison’s prominent Burma collection, a collection largely dependent on the former Baptist identity of the college, and Granville’s role as a base for Baptist missions to Southeast Asia.
Intentionally turning the visitor’s gaze toward the history of colonial expansion in South Asia by the British Raj between the 17th-20th centuries, the complex relationship of the entrance of British, then American, Christian missionaries in the 19th-20th centuries in India and Burma, and histories of individual missionaries and the meanings association with their “possession” of art and artifacts of Burma, this exhibition re-contextualizes objects and their current identities as part of a university collection.
Precious art objects, like gilt Buddhas, and historically lesser-valued material culture, like tribal language Bible translations, are here reconsidered as unique, often Orientalist, historical articulations of power and prestige when displayed in the context of a museum. This exhibition was developed in part out of a curatorial/museum studies course taught in the Spring of 2009, also entitled “Baptists in Burma,” and will thus represent student work produced last semester, supplemented with additional research.
