The Stavelot Triptych is a medieval reliquary and portable altar in gold and enamel intended to protect, honor and display pieces of the True Cross.

Like many medieval reliquaries it takes the form of the relic it protects, in this case a chair.

Gaudy gold ceramic sculptures suggestive of medieval reliquaries have nearly illegible forms of Gothic-Surrealist imagery and block letters that insult various art world functionaries in obscene terms.

Using this religious analogy, he has created three wooden boxes shaped like church windows and designed to hold symbolic relics of the nuclear industry, much as medieval reliquaries contained alleged fragments of the cross or locks of Christ's hair.

Acord was inspired to create a series of reliquaries in which symbolic items from the nuclear age were housed in boxes modelled after the medieval reliquaries used to preserve sacred Christian objects.

In a somewhat bemused, wholly undidactic way, the artist asks us to consider why on earth this blank rectangular screen has come to resemble a medieval reliquary or shrine.

This approach is reminiscent of the medieval reliquaries.

"Tabernacle (early 21st C)," by Alica Carla Pennisi, is a box given a few gilded gables to look like a medieval reliquary.

Her much-revered shrine is a short walk from the Cloisters, which has medieval reliquaries in its collection.

So were liturgical furnishings, books and medieval reliquaries.