Museum of Religious Art
Project
The church has a long history of commissioning art but has a great difficulty in conserving it. Churches do not provide anywhere near optimal conditions for displaying the treasures they contain. Despite this, there is a strong movement to return devotional art currently in museums to the churches they came from. This conundrum gives rise to the thesis of this project.
What if religious art could be maintained in a religious setting, but one that is purpose made , has all the advantages of the climate control, security and access to restoration and educational and scholarly activities. The challenge is to find a form that symbolises church architecture, has a devotional character but provides a context that responds to the modern demands of display, conservation, and access.
The response therefore takes the form of a reflection of ecclesiastic architecture. The spatial sectional characteristics of the nearby Santa Maria Della Salute are hollowed out from what appears as a massive Istrian stone monolith. It appears as a ‘cast’ of a church, a ‘replica’ which offers an interiority through its bass relief facing the canal. The obverse of the ‘cast’ provides the context for the display of the religious artifacts along with spaces designed to provide an attenuated natural lighting and controlled thermal environment that protects the artifacts and offers access and new possibilities to view the works. And additionally, to provide space for resident artists to develop new religious commissions and conservators to restore works.
