Peter Manseau is an American writer, religion scholar and museum curator. He is Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian.
Manseau attended college at the University of Massachusetts, then earned his master's degree and doctorate from Georgetown University. [1]
Writing in The National Interest , Ivan Plis describes Manseau as an "unusual man for the job" at National Museum of American History, contrasting Manseau's webzine Killing the Buddha, a self-described “religion magazine for people made anxious by churches,” and what Plis describes as Manseau's attraction "to the bizarre and sometimes discomforting ways in which religion makes us behave", with the museum's "musty reputation as 'America’s attic.'” [2] Manseau's 2017 illustrated collection Objects of Devotion: Religion in Early America, which accompanied the museum's first religion-oriented exhibit, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called the book "a wonderful, inspiring collection." [3]
Manseau wrote a memoir entitled Vows, about his mother, a former Catholic nun, and father, a former Catholic priest. [2] [4]
In 2008 Manseau won the National Jewish Book Award [5] and in 2009 the Sophie Brody Award for his debut novel, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. [4] Speaking about the novel, in which Yiddish features significantly, Manseau told The New Yorker , "Though most of my writing is about religion in one way or another, that’s my real interest: language—the ways in which religious identities are shaped by the languages we use to talk about them." [4]
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.
Spencer Fullerton Baird was an American naturalist, ornithologist, ichthyologist, herpetologist, and museum curator. Baird was the first curator to be named at the Smithsonian Institution. He eventually served as assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1850 to 1878, and as Secretary from 1878 until 1887. He was dedicated to expanding the natural history collections of the Smithsonian which he increased from 6,000 specimens in 1850 to over 2 million by the time of his death. He published over 1,000 works during his lifetime.
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, is one of two religious works constructed by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson compiled the manuscripts but never published them. The first, The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1804, but no copies exist today. The second, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1820 by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine.
Sidney Dillon Ripley II was an American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist. He served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years, from 1964 to 1984, leading the institution through its period of greatest growth and expansion. For his leadership at the Smithsonian, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985.
Museology or museum studies is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and education.
Haven Kimmel is an American author, novelist, and poet.
Langdon Warner (1881–1955) was an American archaeologist and art historian specializing in East Asian art. He was a professor at Harvard and the Curator of Oriental Art at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. He is reputed to be one of the models for Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones. As an explorer/agent at the turn of the 20th century, he studied the Silk Road. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1927.
Austin Loomer Rand was a Canadian zoologist.
Gohonzon (御本尊) is a generic term for a venerated religious object in Japanese Buddhism. It may take the form of a scroll or statuary. The term gohonzon typically refers to the mainstream use of venerated objects within Nichiren Buddhism, referring to the calligraphic paper mandala inscribed by the 13th Japanese Buddhist priest Nichiren to which devotional chanting is directed.
Douglas Jerome Preston is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child, he has also written six solo novels, including the Wyman Ford series and a novel entitled Jennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.
Steve Berry is an American author and former attorney currently living in St. Augustine, Florida. He is a graduate of Mercer University's Walter F. George School of Law. He was a trial lawyer for 30 years and held elected office for 14 of those years. He is a founding member of International Thriller Writers—a group of more than 4,200 thriller writers from around the world—and served three years as its co-president.
Donald Sewell Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished university professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures.
John Edward Williams was an American author, editor and professor. He was best known for his novels Butcher's Crossing (1960), Stoner (1965), and Augustus (1972), which won a U.S. National Book Award.
Jeff Sharlet is an American academic, journalist, and author. Throughout his career, Sharlet's work has focused on religion.
Walter "Chico" Hopps was an American museum director, gallerist, and curator of contemporary art. Hopps helped bring Los Angeles post-war artists to prominence during the 1960s, and later went on to redefine practices of curatorial installation internationally. He is known for contributing decisively to “the emergence of the museum as a place to show new art.”
Devotion, a central practice in Buddhism, refers to commitment to religious observances or to an object or person, and may be translated with Sanskrit or Pāli terms like saddhā, gārava or pūjā. Central to Buddhist devotion is the practice of Buddhānussati, the recollection of the inspiring qualities of the Buddha. Although buddhānussati was an important aspect of practice since Buddhism's early period, its importance was amplified with the arising of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Specifically, with Pure Land Buddhism, many forms of devotion were developed to recollect and connect with the celestial Buddhas, especially Amitābha.
In Buddhism, faith refers to a serene commitment to the practice of the Buddha's teaching, and to trust in enlightened or highly developed beings, such as Buddhas or bodhisattvas. Buddhists usually recognize multiple objects of faith, but many are especially devoted to one in particular, such as one particular Buddha. Faith may not only be devotion to a person, but exists in relation to Buddhist concepts like the efficacy of karma and the possibility of enlightenment.
C. Malcolm Watkins (1911–2001) was an American historian, archaeologist, and curator. He researched early American material culture, with a specific interest in the decorative arts. Watkins served as a head curator of the Department of Cultural History at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He spent a total of 31 years working at the Smithsonian.
Paul J. Smith was an arts administrator, curator, and artist based in New York. Smith was professionally involved with the art, craft, and design fields since the early 1950s and was closely associated with the twentieth-century studio craft movement in the United States. He joined the staff of the American Craftsmen's Council in 1957, and in 1963 was appointed Director of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, a position he held for the next 25 years. In September 1987, he assumed the title of director emeritus and continued to work as an independent curator and consultant for museums, arts organizations, and collectors.
Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.