Transformation of Wine into Water: sacred art and their survival in museums

Abstract

This paper deals with the symbolic transformation among sacred objects when those became museology pieces. Removing those objects from the environment and functions which originally they are intended to be use, conferring them different meaning and uses, which were rarely taken on account in the moment of elaboration or reception of those pieces.

In the case of the collection based on the ‘sacrality’, this is even more obvious, since the devotional value is substitute for secular ones. Therefore, this is not the case for a religious cult of the object anymore, but to find out different symbolic values for it. Focus on aspects like artistic and esthetic originality, authorship, rarity; historical links related with the authenticity and cultural values like national or ethnical identities. The question we propose is: If the meaning, the ‘live’ of certain objects, bring them to an organic interaction with the reasons why those were thought and made. What would be the conditions which could create the possibilities for the preservation of the ‘authentically ‘symbolic aspects of those objects? For a better systematization of the paper, we circumscribe our analyzes to a single institution: The Museu Mineiro – Belo Horizonte / MG, Brazil.