IT IS nearly a quarter of a century since Neil MacGregor first worked with St Martin-in-the-Fields. He was Director of the National Gallery between 1987 and 2002, and shared the church’s concern for central London’s homeless community. He curated “Seeing Salvation”, one of the UK’s most popular exhibitions at the turn of the millennium, attracting more than 5000 daily visitors to the National Gallery. An accompanying book and BBC series explored the power of images of Christ.
This year, Mr MacGregor delivers one of the “Inspirations” lecture series at the church, where he will look at the objects and images that he has worked with, and how displaying them to the public has changed in the past 25 years. “The starting point is that looking at objects connected with faith in a public space, as a way of deepening the public refection on questions of faith. It is very much faith in the public square, but faith for the individual, and the questions about faith a work of art can help an individual articulate and deepen,” he tells me.
“But an institution has to decide how it presents and how it comments, and that has become much more acute, because the role of religion in global politics has changed so dramatically in the last 25 years. The Twin Towers attack was the year after ‘Seeing Salvation’. That puts the whole question of religion and faith as a political force, as a force that motivates communities, that holds communities together, into a quite different perspective.”
Beginning with two works by Titian, Noli Me Tangere (c.1514) and Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-23), Mr MacGregor says that they tell essentially the same story. Noli Me Tangere has an added resonance because it was one of the paintings chosen by wartime Londoners to be the National Gallery’s picture of the month, when the entire national collection was sheltered from the bombing in a Welsh mine.
“The thing that fascinated me was how much more difficult people found it to engage with that picture if they were not Christian than to engage with Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne. But the Bacchus and Ariadne and Noli Me Tangere are about the same subject.
“They’re about a woman who has loved someone, who has been abandoned, and then who encounters a god, and the encounter with a god changes her life, and brings her new life, new hope. And, for most visitors, it’s much easier to engage with the Bacchus and Ariadne . . . because we know it’s a myth. We know it is about a truth that is absolutely universal and perpetuates, even though that event may never have happened. It speaks to the permanent truth, and enduring truth.”
AS INTERNATIONAL adviser to the CSVMS Museum in Mumbai, Mr MacGregor has been looking at how to present works from the Western Mediterranean tradition to Indian audiences, together with displaying images of gods that some museum visitors will consider living.
“Working in India, looking at the statue of the god Vishnu as a boar — for Hindus, this is no myth: to Hindus, this is faith. The god Vishnu takes living forms, or incarnations, at regular intervals. And the incarnations are to redeem the world; so it’s another faith system where the divine comes down to earth to save humanity. And the statue of the god Vishnu as a boar rescuing humanity from the swamp, from the mud, from the mess, is a very central part of Hindu religion.”
He continues: “I can’t believe that actually happened, but I can find in that something of great value in my understanding of the divine — that the divine is about engagement with the mess and mud of the world in order to redeem humanity. If a museum is presenting two works of art about the divine taking living form to save humanity, how does it present them to a public that may be Hindu, may be Christian, may be both, may be none? How is it going to make them engage with the work of art, and that behind this is an enormous truth about the human understanding of the divine?”
Portraying the beliefs of faiths that do not use imagery, such as Islam, is also challenging for museums and galleries. “What is striking to me about the Islamic tradition is what you can show to people in a museum context — even to people who can’t read the Arabic text — once you decide the word is living. The word of God is the living word, because God dictates the Qur’an directly to Mohammad. Those are the words of God in a way that Christian scriptures aren’t, all being translated.
“So, the fact you have the word of God — you revere it by making it as beautiful as possible. and then you surround yourself with it. You use it decoratively, on textiles and ceramics and metalwork. You live surrounded by the word. You live in the word in Islamic tradition in a way that’s not really possible in the Christian tradition, because we never really elaborated the beautiful word, because we never had a calligraphic tradition.”
Museums can recreate this sense of immersion, he believes. “What I find very powerful in a museum display of Islamic calligraphy in the different media is the fact you can surround yourself, live with and in the word every day, all around you, in a way the Christian traditions never really attempted.”
OTHER faiths’ understanding of the divine can be encountered through action as well as images and objects. An approach during lockdown from the family-run Punjab Kitchen restaurant in St Martin’s Lane, near the church, brought Mr MacGregor into contact with the Sikh langar. “As Sikhs, they had this great tradition of the langar, which is providing food for absolutely everybody, and that is part of their religious service to the world. They asked if they could use their own kitchens and help St Martin’s feed the homeless.”
While breaking bread together is found in many faiths, Mr MacGregor says the universality of the Sikh langar is significant. “The key point of the langar is that it is open to absolutely anybody, no question of religion, caste, gender, or belief. You have the food from God, so you share it with everybody. And it’s in the sharing with everybody that you articulate your belief in the divine.”
AlamySikh devotees eat langar food at the Hazur Sahib gurudwara, in the city of Nanded, Maharashtra, in India
He continues: “The idea, that is a very universal one: that when we eat food together we encounter the divine. For Christians, in the supper at Emmaus, in the breaking of the bread, you see the divine. The Last Supper, the communion: the sharing of food is an articulation of divinity in the community, and it’s how you explore and discover the divine in the community.”
The reservation of communion for the faithful is in contrast to the Sikh universal breaking of bread. “The communion, the eucharist, has been used in the Christian tradition to exclude: it’s only for the faithful. And you impose discipline by excluding people from the shared meal. That difference between the two traditions seems to be something we should be doing more about, because there is something absolutely inspired about the boundless generosity of the Sikh sharing, which is not mirrored in the Christian tradition of the sacred meal.
“These are questions we need to ask ourselves. How do we understand the sharing of the eucharist? Do we want to go on limiting it to people who share our beliefs? And it’s only a symbolic meal. Sikhs are giving real food.”
Engaging with the Hindu gods, Islamic calligraphy, and the Sikh langar are the encounters that have inspired Mr MacGregor to think about his inherited traditions.
Brought up in Glasgow, he describes his parents as “traditionally Church of Scotland”, which he prefers to define as Calvinist rather than Low Church. “I grew up in a Calvinist world, which was a world of virtually no images in church. The only images were in the children’s Bible with people in the ‘Holy Land’ wearing what looked like dressing gowns. No religious art, but a very high level of intellectual engagement with the text.
“The quality of preaching and the quality of intellectual debate about the text and what was going on was very high indeed. So, neither of my parents were particularly religious, but we were conventionally Church of Scotland. I went to Sunday school. And, at school, we had hymns, readings, and prayers every morning. These happened in a school hall, not a school chapel. A very conventional religious upbringing of the period.”
MR MACGREGOR’s decades-long relationship with St-Martin-in-the-Fields began with a shared concern that the homeless would have somewhere safe, as well as warm, to go. “The National Gallery did a lot of work with St Martin’s, because one of the roles of the gallery is to be a safe place for people, too, and so many homeless people are vulnerable in different ways. So, we started working with St Martin’s and their engagement with the homeless. We wanted to offer encouragement to use the gallery as a safe place. They might or might not want to look at pictures — we hope they did. We organised events to encourage them.”
The part played by public libraries and public galleries as a haven for the marginalised is immediately lost if there is an admission charge. Putting St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey in the dock, Mr MacGregor says that, as national symbols, they should make artwork should be available to all. People on low incomes and Universal Credit should be at the top of landmark churches’ “To do” list.
“If you believe that looking at works of art helps people articulate their engagement with the divine, then works of art in churches have a very particular role. Jesus had certain views on that. Jesus’s teaching on that doesn’t tend to suggest there should be a financial barrier — certainly not £30, which is what it costs to get into Westminster Abbey. This is about works of art in public spaces.”
The language about Christian art also needs to reflect the fact that many British citizens and global visitors do not hold Christian beliefs. “If you come from a Western tradition that is so tied down to historic factuality rather than to a poetic reading of stories, and this comes down to literal fundamentalism in religions with texts, then you make it very hard for people who don’t accept the authority of the text; and that’s a very big question for us at the moment.”
Praising the east window of St Martin’s, with its warped leading, as the best piece of art commissioned in the past 50 years, Mr MacGregor explains: “The way Shirazeh Houshiary has found a language for the mystery of the crucifixion that goes beyond specific narrative, for people to be able to find in it what is meaningful and nourishing to them, is quite brilliant, while remaining true to the fundamental mystery of creation, suffering, and redemption.
“She has found a visual language that is non-specific but powerful. You have the sense at the centre there may be the suffering head of Christ, or maybe an egg. You have the sense of a power of love, of creation that explodes. Yet the shape is of the cross, the suffering of the cross, but coming from that light, new life.”
Contemplating the east window is part of his Sunday devotion. “I find, looking at it each week, it keeps moving me in different ways as the light changes, as I change, as I come with different concerns. Fascinating it was made by someone who came from an Islamic tradition.”
St Martin’s also provides a framework for spiritual inquiry. “The mission statement of St Martin’s used to be ‘a place where people can explore the meaning of Jesus in their lives’. It’s not about believing: it’s about exploring. I need a framework in which to explore,” he says.
“And it’s a very powerful framework, because there’s an intellectual engagement with the text and with the tradition, an aesthetic engagement through music of a very high order, and there’s a practical engagement though service and working with the local community. There’s three ways of exploring what that teaching means. It’s not about believing: it’s about exploring.”
Neil MacGregor will deliver his lecture, “Inspiration: Living with the Gods”, at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2, and online, on 4 November from 7 to 8.30 p.m. stmartin-in-the-fields.org