95 - The Botolph Group, Inc.

The Botolph Group, Inc.
161 Newbury Street, Boston, Mass. 02116.

"The role of the artist in alerting us to truth and trends in our culture is an invaluable one." That sentence sounds like an opening salvo to a pretentious term paper. Actually it is a truism which applies, of all places, to a small semi-cellar gallery on Newbury Street, Boston. The Botolph Center (St. Botolph is the patron saint of Boston), snuggled in a three block row of galleries, gift shops, and restaurants, is one of the most intriguing and refreshing nerve centers or focal points for sensitive persons to comprehend a very significant development in our culture. More particularly, it is revealing in what it has to say about the Christian life in our time.

In an unpretentious manner, without "front" or public relations gamesmanship, Celia Hubbard and Mickey Myers, the senior and junior partners of the Botolph Center, have shaped a forum for the celebration of life through art forms. The Botolph Center was founded by Celia Hubbard in 1953. The original motivation was to gather a group of artists, architects, and designers, mostly Roman Catholic, who would lift the esthetic standards of Catholic art. Their work was well-timed since it coincided with a growing dissatisfaction with the religious "junk" (Jesus, the Clairol model) which was hawked to the pious as Christian art. From this first period too there was a live participation of the Botolph group in the Catholic liturgical avant-garde. The gallery not only sold the better types of religious art, it also commissioned artists to work for the churches.

Latterly, the emphasis has shifted (corresponding to a shift in the church's thinking about itself in relation to such words as secular and sacred) away from "religious" art as such to a more secular approach to art. This is based on the assumption that all of creation is God's and that no art form, just because it calls itself "religious" or is associated with church building, is really more Christian or more authentically expressive of the deepest and most compelling issues of life and death than any other. What the Botolph Center reflects, and for which it is increasingly a focus, is that type of Christian commitment which is wary of heavy institutionalism and is more interested in celebration and joy, all the while being firmly devoted to social justice.

Botolph is no longer a religious "supply" house (and many who come there apparently wonder if the church is such any longer). Botolph has become a rallying place, an identifying symbol, for many Catholics, Protestants, and many of no church, who feel instinctively that a Center which has good taste, reflects a zest for life, and which counts among its

96 - The Botolph Group, Inc.

supporters such persons as Corita Kent, Harvey Cox, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Daniel Berrigan, is speaking to their hearts and minds.

A typical printed card, suitable for all kind of friends, relations, and especially church officials, splashed with brilliant red and yellow, bears a line from the poet E.E. Cummings: "damn everything but the circus." Inside, a commentary by S. Helen Kelley reads:

". . . it means
damn everything
that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking
inward turning,
damn everything
that won't get into the circle,
that won't enjoy
that won't throw its heart
into the tension,
surprise,
fear
and delight of the circus,
the round world,
the full existence."

The Botolph Center, with its cards, mobiles, weavings, glass forms, books, etc., is a major clue to where the edge of the Christian community is growing. Positively, it assumes that Christ is everywhere in life and that, without ornamented preaching or labored apologetic, the Christian is called to rejoice and to celebrate the fabric of creation wherever it is woven and by whomever. Negatively, it represents a dissatisfaction with the church's imperialistic desire to sanctify this and to reject that, to baptize the overly religious and to wall out the best in the secular.

Walter D. Wagoner
Boston Theological Institute
Cambridge, Massachusetts