UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS — This is a quiet town, so quiet the red-light district relegates the women to houseboats on the canals.
Perhaps the quietest spot, however, is the Museum of Christian Art, or Catharijneconvent, named for its patron, St. Catherine, in a former convent of nuns nestled against the church of the Roman Catholic archbishop.
In recent weeks, as visitors passed the peaceful cloister leading to the museum’s entrance, they were struck by a three-meter, or nine-foot, white polyester phallus.
The work of a local Dutch artist, it was a kind of introduction to an exhibit of 122 objects by artists from 27 countries titled Lingam, for the Hindu cult object usually viewed in the West as a phallic symbol. It is the most common representation of Shiva — the destroyer, the transformer, the god who embodies both life and the negation of life — at temples across India.
Most of the objects are barely larger than a fist. Some portray the phallus in wire, others in cardboard, still others in metal; one by the American artist Matt Stone is in denim and plastic. Some resemble mushrooms, others pin cushions. They were displayed on three tables covered in saffron-colored fabric, in one of the museum’s largest display areas.
Utrechters came in droves. In its regular six weeks, the show drew more than 9,000 visitors, numbers large enough to prompt the museum to extend the exhibit by two weeks. In May, it moves to a museum in Mons, Belgium.
The exhibit shocked some in Utrecht. Ruud-Jan Kokke, 54, a Dutch artist who contributed a work, said the reaction of his 20-year old daughter was, “‘Dad, an exhibit of penises?”’
The organizers sought to foster debate in the Netherlands on Christianity and sexuality. Dutch gay rights groups recently protested the refusal by a Roman Catholic church near Amsterdam to give communion to homosexuals; at the same time, Catholic bishops ordered a sweeping investigation into reports of sexual abuse by priests at schools and seminaries.
The museum abuts a soaring Gothic church that serves the Roman Catholic archbishop of Utrecht, who has kept out of the debate. Requests for comment from the archdiocese by phone and e-mail went unanswered.
If the church kept quiet, others didn’t. Posters around town to announce the exhibit were torn or defaced. Leaflets left in distributors disappeared overnight. Angry letters and e-mail messages arrived at the museum denouncing the show.
Within the museum itself there were doubts. “Some employees said to me, ‘We heard rumors,”’ said Guus van den Hout, a specialist in 17th-century Italian art who has been the museum’s director since 2001. “I had difficulty convincing my staff. My trustees said, ‘What are you going to do?’ and I said, ‘Trust me.”’
The idea for the show was born of contacts Mr. van den Hout had with Ruudt Peters, a Dutch jewelry designer and artist who taught art in Stockholm. Mr. Peters, 59, supplied the museum with a chalice and communion dishes for its permanent collection. When he organized an exhibit of sculptures interpreting the lingam by his students in Stockholm, Mr. van den Hout saw it and, though initially skeptical, agreed to bring it to Utrecht.
The museum, which is funded entirely by the government with no church participation, underwent a three-year, $70 million renovation in 2006 and had organized very successful temporary exhibits, including one on angels and one on St. Nicholas — Santa Claus for the Dutch — that drew adults and children alike. Its permanent collection boasts magnificent works of art, including statuary, liturgical pieces, and canvases by artists like Rembrandt and Frans Hals.
“We wanted to criticize the hypocritical Christian attitude to sexuality, which won’t let people enjoy sex,” said Mr. van den Hout, a scholar who also advises the Vatican on cultural matters.
“We cannot change the morality, but we tried to give another way of looking at it,” he said with a smile. “I like to find the boundaries — maybe cross them a little bit, too.”
Mr. Peters, who will be showing works including jewelry in the New York area this month, became the curator of the exhibition.
It really began, he said, about a decade ago when he traveled for six months in Asia and discovered lingams everywhere. Though Hindu scholars debate the lingam’s sexual symbolism, he has little doubt.
Mr. Peters and his gay partner were married in a church service, and he hoped putting the lingam in a Christian art museum might influence popular thinking.
“We show openly this, that sexual activity is not a dirty thing, but part of life,” he said. “I hope people will change, but I don’t think the church will change. They have had 2,000 years to change.”
Not all visitors felt Mr. Peters achieved his goal. “It was a nice opportunity to give an image of Christianity, not just as pure reason,” said Miriam Kuikman, 25, an art history student at Utrecht University who came with a fellow student. “It would have been nice if they had made a connection with the art of the museum.”
“It’s without any context, loose images on a subject, not fitting in any way as a whole,” said Maarten van Deventer, 23. “It’s not working.”
Others questioned its ability to shock. “Shocking or creative?” asked Michael Ilnicki, 27, a Canadian physicist living in the Netherlands. Young contemporaries, he said, hardened by online phenomena like Chatroulette, a social Web site that exposes users to nudity and sexual activity, might not find the show shocking.
“There was much tongue in cheek,” he said.
The artists disagreed. Johanna Schweizer, 60, a Dutch artist who submitted a crocheted figure of a priapic hare that served to illustrate the poster and pamphlet for the exhibit, said she saw a link between lingam and Christianity “in fertility, in the parallel between animal and human fertility.”
“It’s putting the whole thing on a higher plane, thinking of the body as a temple, which is important to Christianity,” she said. “It’s a reaction to a culture of vulgarity, trying to make it magic and holy again.”
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