Living with the Sacred: The Home Altar as Ex-voto

Kay Turner, Brooklyn Arts Council/New York University

Using Italian-American and Mexican-American examples from her research on Catholic women’s domestic altar traditions, folklorist Kay Turner will discuss the liveliness of relationships between women and the saints they venerate personally. For these women, holy images and statues are not just static representations, but signs of affiliation and maternal legacy. At the altar associations with the saints are built over time, using multiple means such as prayer, narrative, and ritual. The talk is presented in cooperation with the Brooklyn Arts Council and its festival Half the Sky: Brooklyn Women in Traditional Performance, April-June 2012.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Graces Received: Painted and Metal Ex-votos from Italy, on view September 16, 2011, through May 25, 2012.