Teaching in Musealized Religious Spaces: Lessons from an Amsterdam Seminar

The changing position of religion in today's society and the declining familiarity with religious practices make the interpretation of religious heritage a challenging responsibility for heritage professionals. This chapter describes how the Reinwardt Academy prepares its students for this challenge. As part of the Cultural Heritage & Religion course, the students developed an interpretive intervention in two musealized religious spaces: Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, a 17th-century Amsterdam canal house with a hidden Catholic church, and the permanent presentation “Religion” in the former Ashkenazi synagogue complex in Amsterdam, now the Jewish Museum. During the project, the students learned that the tensions between different possible interpretations do not necessarily have to be resolved but can be used as a starting point for dialogue. With a description of the course design and an analysis of the learning outcomes, this chapter provides a blueprint for preparing a new generation of heritage professionals for the field of religious heritage.