American Religion at The Met Cloisters

Abstract

This article traces the religious history of The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to medieval European architecture and art in northern Manhattan, providing a case study of how Americans have used images of the medieval to articulate a moralistic American spirituality. It focuses on particular moments in the museum’s history—the 1914 museum created by sculptor George Grey Barnard; the 1938 opening of The Met Cloisters, funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; its reception in the mid-twentieth century; a series of Episcopal Masses in the 1970s; and the spring 2018 exhibit Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination—in order to unpack and contextualize the changes and constants in the visual vocabulary of religion at this museum. Throughout the twentieth century, founders, donors, curators, critics, and visitors saw a “right” way to respond emotionally to The Cloisters. One’s response to the museum demonstrated not only one’s sensitivity but also one’s character, especially the moral superiority of elite white Protestant men. In the twenty-first century, the design of Heavenly Bodies and its reception both drew upon and pushed back against the masculine Protestant paradigm of American medievalism that had long been established at The Cloisters.