Resisting Institutional Power: The Women of St. Barnabas

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relation between museums exhibiting sacred objects, visitors, and politics. More specifically, it explores the reasons why a minority group of visitors might resist, or even reject, the institutional power of a museum. St. Barnabas Icon Museum, located in the northern part of Cyprus, and a minority group of its visitors—the Women of St. Barnabas—serve as our case study. The two main communities of the island (Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots) perceive the museum in dramatically different ways and use it to support their own claims. The Women of St. Barnabas, a group of Orthodox Christian, Greek Cypriot women, reject the museum and insist on using it as a religious instead of a secular space. The authors argue that apart from religious reasons, political beliefs predominantly shape this group's perceptions and uses of the museum.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Parts of this article have been presented at the 25th Annual Visitor Studies Association Conference (2012) as well as the EUNAMUS conference entitled “National Museums and the Negotiation of Difficult Pasts.” We thank the participants of these conferences as well the anonymous reviewers of Visitor Studies for their valuable feedback. We also thank Marina Yerali-Christodoulou for transcribing the interviews. And, as always, we are deeply grateful to all the interviewees who shared their views with us.

Notes

¹An iconostasis is a wall of icons separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church.

²Italics are used to indicate an emphatic tone in the narration.

³Depending on the point of view of the narrator, the St. Barnabas Icon Museum is either referred to as a museum or a church. For the Greek Cypriot authorities and the research participants, the space is still a church, whereas for the Turkish Cypriot authorities and most of its visitors, it is a museum. This reflects the tension that is at the heart of this analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is Assistant Professor at the Cyprus University of Technology. Her research interests include museum and visitor studies with an emphasis on issues of cultural consumption, as well as photography and visual sociology. Address correspondence to Theopisti Sylianou-Lambert, 31 Archipiskopou Kyprianou, 3036 Limassol, Cyprus. E-mail: [email protected].

Alexandra Bounia

Alexandra Bounia is Associate Professor of museology at the University of the Aegean, Greece. Her research interests include the history, theory, and management of collections and museums, the interpretation of material culture, and the use of audiovisual technologies as interpretative media. E-mail: [email protected].

Sam Hardy

Sam Hardy is an Honorary Research Associate at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, UK. His research interests include the politics and ethics of archaeological work, the destruction of cultural and community property, and the trade in illicit antiquities. E-mail: [email protected].