What Museums Don't Reveal About Religious Art

In 1983, at Japan Society in Manhattan, I saw a show of early Buddhist sculpture so beautiful that I maxed out my Visa card to fly to Japan to find more. It was my first time there. I spoke no Japanese. I'd prepared no itinerary. So I started where most art-tourists do, at the Tokyo National Museum. It's a roomy, clean-lined, modern-feeling place. I felt right at home. Yet two experiences on my first day there surprised me. As I was lingering over a glorious ninth-century wood sculpture of a Miroku, the Buddha of the Future, a visitor near me clapped her hands quickly, and sharply, twice, something (I would learn) that visitors to temples and shrines do to honor a deity. Later, in a different gallery, I noted that in front of another Buddhist figure the museum had placed a fresh lotus floating in a bowl of clear water. Through two gestures, one personal, the other institutional, the functional nature of religious images was made clear.