"Ex-votos (votive offering). Gratitude mirrors" has been extended

From 20 April 2023, the museum will be offering an exhibition where the significance of the objects on display lies in the infinite power of belief. Known as ex-votos, these artefacts represent a miraculous moment in time when a divine being helps someone to get through a difficult situation.

Ex-votos are a form of gratitude, in the shape of a physical object which is offered to the divine being, in thanks for their benevolence. For this reason, their purpose is twofold. On one hand, they are a reflection of the prodigious, a representation of an extraordinary event. On the other, they initiate a process of communion, a collective testimony to communication with the higher being. This occurs because ex-votos are publicly offered in temples, altars and chapels, acting as a catalyst for shared faith.
Both purposes merge in an act of compensation or payment by the believer for the benevolence of the divine being, reaffirming the hope that it will intervene again on behalf of the faithful if needed. In this exchange between the divine and the human within the symbolic order, ex-votos combine promise and gratitude. This is why the production of these votive objects constitutes one of the distinctive elements of popular religion around the world.    

The collection of ex-votos at the museum

The Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món has an important collection of panel paintings depicting miraculous scenes, of great artistic vibrancy, an expression of Catalan religiosity during the 18th and 19th centuries. 
Some have been chosen to form part of the exhibition because they express the concerns that afflicted those making the offerings at the time: natural disasters, shipwrecks, illnesses, accidents out in the fields or when working.  Other votive images have been chosen for their association with miraculous cures, representing parts of the body reproduced in wax, metallic eyes, human figures and altarpieces hailing from the museum’s collection and representative of the diversity of cultures that have ex-votos in common. 
There is even a simulated altar bearing votive images, in the style of the places of worship to be found all over Catalonia. The exhibition ends with a selection of images of new forms of individual commitment with the idea of going beyond the collective, which is how these ceremonies of gratitude have survived in 21st-century societies.