This lecture is presented in conjunction with the UC Santa Barbara Religious Studies Department scholar-in-residence and celebrates the return of SBMA’s Jain Household Shrine to the Asian Art galleries after nearly a decade away from public view.

There are at least ten elaborately carved wooden Jain domestic shrines (ghar derāsar) in American museum collections. How and why did so many of these large objects move from their original location as essential components to Jain devotional culture in 19th-century Gujarat to become art commodities in 20th-century U.S.? What push and pull factors were responsible for this shift? To answer these questions requires careful study of socioeconomic patterns in India and the United States. As Jains moved from older urban centers in Gujarat to the new metropole of Bombay and sought out new shrines in their modern environment, the shrines that were left behind became expendable and lost their ritual function. At the same time, practitioners of the arts and crafts movement in the West, in particular, Lockwood de Forest, brought attention to Gujarati woodwork, creating a market for the old shrines.

John E. Cort is Professor Emeritus of Religion, Denison University, Granville, OH. He has published widely on Jain art, religion, literature and history. He contributed a chapter to the 2016 SBMA exhibition Puja and Piety: Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Art of India, and wrote specifically on the carved wooden Façade of a Jain Household Shrine in the SBMA collection, as well as the carved wooden dome to a 16th century Jain temple that was donated by Lockwood de Forest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As part of Friends of Asian Art’s mission to provide public education on Asian art and history, admission to this event is free for students and SBMA Members.