Alain de Botton the 42 year old Swiss philosopher and television presenter in the UK who established a new educational enterprise in London called “The School of Life”, has released an article in the Guardian referencing the recent saying that “museums of art are our new churches”. de Botton implies that “…in a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.” And if so, “It’s an intriguing idea, part of the broader ambition that culture should replace scripture, but in practice art museums often abdicate much of their potential to function as new churches (places of consolation, meaning, sanctuary, redemption) through the way they handle the collections entrusted to them… The challenge is to rewrite the agendas for our art museums so that collections can begin to serve the needs of psychology as effectively as, for centuries, they served those of theology… Only then would museums be able to claim that they had properly fulfilled the excellent but as yet elusive ambition of in part becoming substitutes for churches in a rapidly secularising society.
Inspired by Alain de Botton http://ow.ly/8JloO image source VeracityVoice http://ow.ly/8Jlxr
