a rant about: has the museum become the new church?

So I have been reading this Marina Abramovic book and this Christian Boltanski book my brother and his girlfriend got me for Christmas.  And as I was reading today, I realized that these two very different artists from different places, who started working at different times, are quoted saying almost the identical thing in interviews in the books:

"The new princes don't build cathedrals anymore; they build museums.  Museums have today become the new churches" -Christian Boltanski

"People don't go to the temples anymore.  They go to the museum"- Marina Abramovic

So I started thinking, is this true?  Has art become the new platform for spiritual experience?  And it first made me think, why do people go to church?  I think a large part is tradition, another is this idea of paying respects, of doing what you need to do to get closer to God and therefore to secure a place in heaven for yourself (if  we are talking about Christianity).  And I don't know if the museum fulfills those needs, a need for ritual and a need for security of our place after we die.  I mean, we can look at going to the museum being a way for one who considers him or herself an artist or of high culture to secure his place in high society or secure the title and identity as artist.  Maybe since looking at art educates the artist, he then becomes closer to creating artwork which secures his position as a good artist, simply because he will then make better art?

Or maybe my whole view of religion and of the church or the temple is a contemporary and somewhat cynical view.  Maybe my view itself is what has made the church less important- that it has become obligation or tradition instead of a space which higher knowledge is being spread.  And maybe since as a culture, we hold successful artists(those which we see in the museums) in such high regard, we go to the museum for a kind of knowledge that we cannot grasp in another space.  Christian Boltanski says something pretty awesome in this interview:

"...I do think that the earliest relationship we have with art is when we first go to church.  Not because painting is there, but because of the presence of the priest, whose words and actions by some sort of abstraction tells us something very important."

  

What makes me curious about this quote is what is the abstraction Boltanski is referring to?  What about the priests' actions and words emit some sort of importance?  And how does the museum or the artwork in a museum do the same thing?

My first response is that what makes church special, what makes the experience so important is the performative aspect of it all: the costumes, the lighting, the sounds, the stage and therefore the separation between the priest and the pews.  There is a purposefulness in the words spoken by the priest, he has written and practiced and used his environment to express ideas that are holy; he uses language to translate ideas established by God, by an unknown but holy presence. 

So maybe the artist does the same thing: the artist use his tools and materials to communicate abstract ideas to a large audience.  And if we say that artists create the culture which we live in, we can parallel that to the idea of God as the ultimate creator.  The artworks themselves becomes parallel to the priest:  a sort of medium for the artist(God) to communicate with the audience.  And the formal properties of the art are the words he uses ; he uses color and composition and form and media to create a piece of work which not only communicates a concept but also compels the viewer to look or listen(in the same way a priest will carefully write a sermon).  And the museum, with its own costuming and acoustics and purposeful aesthetics, helps aid in the audience's acceptance that these works are in fact expressing sacred ideas(and often, universal ideas).  Like church, the museum has established itself as a space separate from the rest of one's environment, a space dedicated solely to one type of communication; a controlled atmosphere. 

So if we accept this sort of offensive and slightly contrived comparison as true, then the question is why has the museum become a more important (or more attended) space of communication than the church or the temple?  And I think that the answer is in the comparison itself.  When church was the center of culture and community(and politics), it made sense that that was where one would go to not only learn of God but learn of their own culture, since the two were so closely related.  Yet, when we now live in a culture which is a mix of different religious beliefs and when religion no longer defines your habits or social circles or country or neighborhood, we must rely on a space which holds the definitions of our culture.  And in a society which is so rich in visual communication, in the media and in advertising, it only makes sense that we pilgrimage to a space which is dedicated to visual communication.