I’m not Catholic but that doesn’t stop me from being fascinated with the history and its artwork. I love the secrecy, the conspiracies, the rituals that go along with this religion. When I had heard that this exhibit was coming to St. Louis, I was all over it (okay, so I really wanted to see the reliquaries, I’m morbid, what can I say?)
Now, an exhibit like this costs a pretty penny ($25) so I was a bit hesitant about paying that price but along comes Groupon which offered a buy-one-get-one free ticket, including an audio tour! Heck yeah! We jumped on that and headed on down to the History Museum.
Quite a few people have told us that it would be hard to obtain tickets: not true. We walked up to the ticket booth, redeemed our tickets and were even able to jump in line for showing at 12:30 (it was almost 1:00).
The exhibit takes you through the years of Catholicism, artistically and historically. The artwork is exquisite, I was just blown away with Michelangelo’s Pieta, the beautiful, intricate gold objects, and the old frescos depicting St. Paul and St. Peter. I think the most fascinating gallery was “Dialogue with the World.” It showed Catholicism throughout the rest of the world.
I don’t care if you’re Catholic or not, you believe or not, I think that you should take advantage of this opportunity to see this exhibition. It impressed me and educated me. I do have one complaint: there were definitely not enough reliquaries. Oh well.