Following my day in Fort Worth, I next made my way to Dallas where I visited the Museum of Biblical Art. Prior to my visit, I’ll admit that I did little to no research and honestly didn’t know what to expect. Was the Museum of Biblical Art a religious institution? Was it secular? Did it evangelize or push a particular set of biblical interpretations? When I visited, I was met with an eclectic museum whose mission was entirely multicultural and educational. My time at the museum was very much enhanced by my chance meeting with its curator, Scott Peck as I entered. Mr. Peck was kind enough to answer all my questions and to take me around the museum.
Museum History:
The Museum of Biblical Art is today a very different institution than it was at the time of its founding in 1966. That year, a wealthy Dallas based socialite and businesswoman named Mattie Curath Byrd founded the museum as the Biblical Arts Center. Byrd used her fortune to acquire and commission artwork related to the Bible. Most notably, she commissioned a 124 foot long painting depicting the miracle of the Pentecost, a story depicted in the New Testament Book of Acts when the disciples of Christ are visited by the Holy Spirit and begin speaking in tongues. Following the instillation of this first painting, the museum’s collection expanded considerably in 1984 through the incorporation of artwork from Byrd’s estate.
Its collection and facilities remained relatively stagnant until 2005 when a fire broke out destroying much of the museum building and large portions of the museum’s collection, including its centerpiece, the Pentecost mural.
After the fire, the museum had to rebuild both its collection and its building. In this task, the museum was aided by a series of individual and institutional donors who made it possible not only for the museum to be rebuilt, but also allowed the museum space to be considerably expanded and reimagined. Whereas prior to the fire, the museum had only three galleries, the new space had room for eleven. The museum’s collections were also renewed and expanded through donations, loans, and purchases made by Peck. While all art curators shape their museum’s collections, as the figure responsible for rebuilding the museum’s collection, Peck had the unique opportunity to reshape the museum as he wanted. When it reopened in 2010, the Museum of Biblical Art not only included its original biblical art sections, but also contained exhibition spaces for Jewish and Israeli Art, Jewish ritual objects, Holocaust Art, a Conservation Laboratory, and more. My focus here however is only on the museum’s biblical art sections.
Among the various other features new to the museum in 2010 was its new name, the Museum of Biblical Art. Peck explained how the museum’s Christian origins and name had for a long time made the museum an object of suspicion, primarily from the Jewish community, many of whom believed the museum was an exclusively Christian space or catered exclusively to Christian interpretations of the Bible, especially the Tanakh/Old Testament. Some even thought that the museum had an evangelizing mission. The Jewish community were not alone in their unease with the museum. According to Peck, some Christian visitors thought the museum was a Jewish space, Catholics thought the space was a Protestant one, Protestants thought of the space as a Catholic one, and some Mormons found the museum exclusionary. Peck told me how one of his goals in the reopening of the museum was to assuage those beliefs and to intentionally create a non-denominational museum which catered to all and attracted a diverse audience. To put it as he did, curating such a museum is a delicate balancing act. Peck told me that today, the museum is visited by Jews and Christians as well as a large number of school groups coming from Jewish Schools, Christian Academies, both Catholic and Protestant, and even the occasional public school. Above all then, the museum attempts to imbue its visitors with a sense of shared ownership of the Bible and its stories as well as an appreciation for other groups who use the text as the basis for their faith.
Architecture:
Among the most enjoyable elements of my visit was the opportunity to appreciate the museum’s intentional architecture. Perhaps the museum’s most distinctive feature, which brings in visitors from the road is its original entrance, a massive city gate whose design exists halfway between monumental ancient gateways, such as the 4000 year old mudbrick gateway at Tel Dan, an archaeological site in Northern Israel, and the Damascus Gate, the most grandiose of Jerusalem’s gates, built by the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman, in 1537. When I asked Peck about why the biblical museum’s gate was primarily based on the design of the Damascus Gate, he explained that Mattie Caruth Byrd had visited Jerusalem, Jordan in the 1950s, and was so impressed by the design of the Damascus gate that she wanted to incorporate it into the architectural exterior of her gallery. When the fire broke out in 2005, much of the original structure was lost, but the gate remained, allowing the new museum to build out from it.
Atop the gate reproduction was a copper stepped structure with a glass pyramid on top. Much of the rest of the building’s new exterior was encased in Jerusalem limestone, ever evocative of the Holy Land. Peck explained how the copper stepped structure was meant to represent a Ziggurat, mudbrick Mesopotamian temple platforms, while the glass pyramid was meant to evoke the pyramids of Egypt. The museum’s interior meanwhile made active use of Corinthian columns and incorporated sections with groin and barrel vaults. Peck explained that he wanted the building’s architecture to reflect the transmission of text and tradition across time beginning in Mesopotamia, continuing to Egypt, then to ancient Palestine. The interior represented the continuation of that tradition as Peck told me the Corinthian columns and atrium space were meant to evoke early synagogues and churches in the Roman and Byzantine period, while the vaults in the museum represented the Medieval Gothic Church tradition.
Even the museum’s windows incorporated a certain architectural significance, Peck explained. Atop the museum’s atrium were four sets of three windows, as Peck put it, the sets of three were meant to represent the Trinity while the number 12 as a whole represented the apostles of Christ. Though not in the works at the moment, Peck told me that in the future he wanted to run architectural tours.
The Museum:
When one enters the museum, the first notable group of artworks is a series of paintings in which Jesus and his family are depicted as black skinned Africans. These paintings include one portrait of Jesus and two versions of the iconic, Madonna and Child. Peck explained that his choice of these artworks as the first seen by visitors was meant to convey right away that the museum’s intention is to present a multicultural and diverse view of the Bible, its characters, and its stories rather than an evangelical or traditional American Protestant point of view.
Following this group of paintings and a series of sculptures by Israeli and Vietnamese artists, upon entering the foyer, visitors come face to face with a series of cast reproductions of classic renaissance sculptural depictions of King David. Peck told me that he saw David as among the most neutral of biblical figures. Though David plays a strong role in Christianity as the ancestor of Jesus, he is equally venerated in Jewish tradition as the progenitor of the Kings of Israel and Judah and at times as a paragon of proper Divinely Ordaned Kingship. The choice to give David such a central role in the museum specifically for his neutrality, at least to me, seems to speak to a continuing worry at the museum that visitors entertain suspicions about the museum’s intention and audience.
From the initial foyer space, visitors can continue into the eclectic ‘National Center for Jewish Art’ which features a group of paintings by Jewish and Israeli artists complemented by an assortment of historical ritual objects. Though conceptualized as a separate museum from the Museum of Biblical Art, as an interconnected space, this section forms a part of the visitor’s experience. This section of the museum is first and foremost used to present artworks related to Judaism, but also serves a secondary and educational role for non-Jewish visitors as an introduction to certain Jewish rituals and holidays through a series of decorated ritual objects. Turning back, visitors can take a walk through the Museum’s Holocaust art center.
After I walked through these first two spaces, I went to the museum’s “European Art Treasury” a space devoted to the display of European Medieval and Renaissance biblical art. Walking past the space’s decorated crosses, numerous depictions of La Pieta, and portraits of Christ, I kept noticing that most of the object’s labels noted that they came from the McCreless collection. When I asked Peck about the museum’s relationship with donors, he made it clear that in part, the museum relies on loans and donations for its collection. Stepping out of the gallery, I witnessed this firsthand as one of the donors to the museum walked in the door. Grabbing Peck’s total attention, they began discussing some of the objects that he had lent for display as well as some of his recent acquisitions that he wanted to put on display at the museum in the future. While all museums maintain close relationships with their patrons, for a smaller art museum like the Museum of Biblical Arts, these relationships are especially important to maintaining the institution and expanding its collection. As a museum with many donations however, the narratives in the Museum of Biblical Arts are also constrained to a certain extent by the artworks donated. While Peck can arrange artwork as he wishes, taking curatorial control, the prevalence of donated pieces act as a limit on the stories Peck can tell.
From the European Art treasury, I entered the Museum’s gallery of contemporary Christian art, containing sculpture and a group of paintings. In addition to a series of artworks showing contemporary views of holy sites in Israel, the gallery also contained a series of ‘sacrocubist’ artworks by Argentinian artist Jorge Cocco. These paintings depicted traditional New Testament stories through cubist art. According to the artist, challenging or non-realist depictions encourage viewers to think much more deeply about artwork. In his view, realistic biblical artwork discourages deeper reflections on the meaning of biblical stories for their viewers. This point might be especially prescient in this day and age where popular biblical discourse often centers around literal interpretations. The gallery also contained the museum’s replacement for its famous Pentecost painting, a new monumental work depicting the moment of Christ’s resurrection.
Exiting the museum’s interior, I walked through an instillation of 14 sculptures representing the stations of the cross along a conceptual ‘Via Dolorosa,’ a Jerusalem street traditionally held to be the one Jesus walked down carrying the cross. The Stations of the Cross are a traditional set of 14 images or places representing the final hours of Jesus’ life as depicted in the New Testament. Traditionally, the reproduction of the Stations of the Cross served as an experiential way of telling the story of Jesus’ death. At each station, believers say prescribed prayers and are encouraged to contemplate Christ’s life at a textual level complimented by their own deeply focused imaginings of the event, perhaps even through the eyes and body of Christ himself. As the only part of the museum in which one inherently completes a religious act by observing artwork and walking through it, I was curious about Peck’s view of how the sculptures could be appreciated by a Jewish person like myself.
Peck told me that in his opinion, at a museum like the Museum of Biblical Art, the traditional liturgical associations of the space could be replaced by a raw emotional understanding. If one of the museum’s goals is to create mutual understandings and appreciation between members of different faith traditions, it is vital that these interactions go beyond simple recognition of a shared use of the same holy book. Rather, to understand a different tradition, it is vital to recognize the deep emotional underpinnings that uphold it. Christ’s sacrifice and suffering are powerful narratives that have attracted believers to the Christian faith for 2000 years. While historical and contemporary divisions and strife might generally warn non-Christians from taking an interest in this narrative, the Museum of Biblical Art offers a space in which one can attempt to empathize, and through it create bonds of respect.
My Dream Museum of Biblical Art
Leaving the museum, I repeatedly thought about one of the paintings Peck had shown me. The painting displayed notable figures from history as well as a series of notable monuments and events in a sort of entangled quilt. Peck was quick to point out that many who observed the painting noted its eurocentrism, and for that reason, when school groups come to the museum, he uses the painting as a vehicle to ask students who and what is missing. Thinking back to the museum as I droive into east Texas the next day, I asked myself the same question. How would I build a Museum of Biblical Art if I had no constraints? What would my 'dream' Museum of Biblical Art look like?
Today, over half the world’s population belongs to a Monotheistic/Abrahamic/Biblical faith background. The Bible itself meanwhile is the most printed and sold book in human history and has woven itself into global discourses and cultures. With each place it spread to, the Bible has been reinterpreted and depicted through new eyes and in new ways including new artforms. As something familiar to numerous cultures, the Bible, and its narratives have the potential to inspire wonderful multicultural understandings and appreciations through a mutual recognition that as a result of its longstanding history of transmission, the Bible does not really ‘belong’ to any one person, group, or interpretive view.
The museum as it exists today certainly exudes this vision with its placement of artworks, including one of a Black African Jesus signalling its intentions to anyone who enters. Its galleries on Jewish and Christian artwork meanwhile provide a space for learning and contemplation. Nontheless, in my dream museum, there would be more mixing of religious traditions in the same space. In my mind, it would be fascinating to see galleries containing meditations and different visions of specific biblical characters and stories by artists of different faith backgrounds and artistic traditions side by side. Are certain stories afforded greater importance in different cultural traditions? Are different details focused on? Are different forms of artistic expression used to convey the same points? In my dream museum, there would be more attention to this gradient leading not only to a greater appreciation for one another's religious traditions, but also for the diversity within those traditions.
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