Mobile Museum of Art's Spiritual Paintings Embrace Many Religious Traditions

"Saint Theresa" by Unknown Mexican Artist (19th c)

ALABAMA - In the Mobile Museum of Art, in Langan Park, some works of art with religious sensibility are nestled among the museum’s vast collection of paintings and sculpture. From Christian to Buddhist, Jewish to Muslim, faith traditions manifest themselves in these pieces. There is a healthy sampling of this art "if you think of religion as world religions," says Paul Richelson, chief curator at the museum, "and are broad in your definition of what religion might be." While there are some works tied specifically to Christianity — a painting of St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, created about 1650 by an unknown Flemish or Spanish artist — others, like African masks, are rooted in what Richelson calls "organized ritual and spirituality." Museum director Tommy McPherson says that "sacredness" is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. [Source: Press Register]