Living with the Gods Brochure

This forty-nine page brochure accompanies the exhibition Living with the Gods: Art, Beliefs, and Peoples at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 27, 2024, through January 20, 2025, organized by Neil MacGregor, exhibition curator, in collaboration with Mahrukh Tarapor, Deborah Roldan, and Gary Tinterow, and exhibition coordinator Jane Hamel. Contributions by James Anno, Helga K. Aurisch, Bradley Bailey, Danielle Bennett, Bradley C. Brooks, James Clifton, Chelsea Dacus, Malcolm Daniel, Ann Dumas, Elizabeth Essner, Jon Evans, Misty Flores, Aimee Froom, Christine Gervais, Alison de Lima Greene, Amy G. Poster, Mari Carmen Ramirez, Beth Schneider, Hao Sheng, Cindi Strauss, Kaylin H. Weber, and Dena M. Woodall.

Living with the Gods: Art, Beliefs, and Peoples looks at stories that we have told each other over the last 4,000 years, through works of art and scripture that were made to give them form and life.

Both the works and the stories arise from questions that humans have always asked themselves, as we try to make sense of our place in the world and in time. How does our short individual life relate to the long, continuing life of the community? What are the ideas that will help us live better with those around us? What is our proper approach to the natural world, and to the vast cosmos surrounding it? Are there forces greater than ourselves that shape what we are?

Often the narratives that answer these questions are religious, articulated through the presence and actions of a god, gods, or spiritual teachers. And in almost every society, these stories are accompanied by objects made beautiful to help us deepen our inquiry and our reflection. They were created to help us to live more closely with the gods, and to live better with each other.

Encompassing tiny fertility figures, larger-than-life representations of spirits, devotional icons, beautiful calligraphy of sacred texts, and exquisitely rendered stone carvings, this exhibition invites you to look at works of art from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in a new—or perhaps in their original—light. They, and the other objects generously loaned from around the world, are shown here not grouped by geography and date, as they usually are, but arranged according to the big questions, fears, and hopes that they embody and illuminate.

—Neil MacGregor