AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) has one of the largest and most important collections of Japanese Buddhist sculpture outside of Japan. For five years (2019-2024), the Conservation in Action: Japanese Buddhist Sculpture in a New Light project focused on the examination and treatment of seven large-scale wooden sculptures from the Heian period (9th-12th centuries). Since 1909, a selection of Buddhist sculptures have been displayed in the Temple Room, a gallery designed to evoke the contemplative atmosphere of a Buddhist temple. During the recent project, conservators worked thousands of hours to examine, document, analyze, and stabilize the seven Temple Room sculptures, uncovering new and exciting discoveries and generating many new technical images.



Although the Temple Room aspires to place the sculptures in an “appropriate” context for viewers, it does not attempt to replicate a complete temple environment. One of the MFA’s goals was to embrace the space’s meditative ambiance by keeping it free of text panels and object placards when the Temple Room was reinstalled. A conservator was invited to join an interdepartmental group with representatives from the curatorial, interpretation, and exhibition media departments to envision what other methods might be employed to better provide contextual information and encourage close-looking of these specific seven Buddhist sculptures. The so-named Temple Room Didactic group partnered with outside collaborator Ideum, a technology company with expertise in creating museum interactives. For a year, the group worked to refine the content of an interactive didactic that was to be placed right outside the central entrance to the Temple Room.



Ideum was responsible for building a custom app that would meet the Museum’s interpretative goals and could technically support the different types of data that were slated for inclusion. For example, an opening choreographed sequence shows visitors what one might experience walking into a Buddhist temple complex in Japan and the main landing page displays 3D models of all seven sculptures in a virtual temple environment. The completed didactic encourages self-led exploration as visitors can choose a specific sculpture or opt to read about the sculptures’ fabrication. The 3D models can be rotated and are tagged with hotspots that prompt viewers to engage with additional information. In-depth conservation stories are available for three of the sculptures. The didactic includes much more information than can be shared on wall labels and gives visitors a more interactive and exploratory experience.



The Temple Room didactic project underwent several iterations as the group sorted through five years of technical data and images to select content that fit within the didactic framework and was illustrative of the interpretative narrative. The separation of complicated technical stories into short clips that fit within the navigation of a yet-unbuilt app was challenging as it was difficult to envision how the completed interactive would function. The final realized interactive didactic successfully presents conservation-derived information in a digestible manner that reinforces the reverence of these Buddhist devotional figures while highlighting the recent conservation efforts.