Museum of the Bible finds big audience in bustling D.C.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Gabe LaMonica

The Museum of the Bible has received nearly 603,000 visitors since it opened its doors last November. “Crowd control was the biggest challenge right off the bat,” said Cary Summers, the president of the museum.

Thousands of people have come from far and wide — sometimes two by two — to visit the red-brick, ark-shaped building in Southwest. The Museum of the Bible, on the 400 block of 4th Street SW, has received nearly 603,000 visitors (about 100,000 a month) since its 2-ton, 40-foot-tall bronze doors opened in November. Those visitor figures place the Museum of the Bible among some of the most popular repositories in the city: The Smithsonian Institution’s newest attraction — the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016 — has received more than 842,000 visitors this year, and the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center has had more than 648,000 so far in 2018. [More]

More than 500,000 people have visited the Museum of the Bible in its first 6 months

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Julie Zauzmer

A camera operator waits for an event to start beneath a projected star-scape at the Museum of the Bible’s November grand opening. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

More than half a million people have visited the Museum of the Bible since Washington’s newest museum opened near the Mall six months ago, the museum said Friday. The museum, which opened in November with splashy attractions such as a walk-through Old Testament and a motion ride, was funded largely by the Green family, the evangelical Christian owners of the Hobby Lobby crafts chain. Christian tour groups especially have been drawn to the six-story museum, two blocks south of the Mall, that focuses on the history and influence of the Bible in America and worldwide. The tally of 565,000 guests in the first six months that the museum reported Friday places it in company with many of Washington’s other free museums. [More]

Asia shapes two art shows at the American University Museum

THE WASHINGTON POST

By Mark Jenkins

Miya Ando, Yoake (Dawn), 2018. Courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery.

WASHINGTON, DC---East and West converge in different ways in the work of Miya Ando and Jiha Moon, two Asia-rooted female artists who have shows in adjacent galleries at the American University Museum. While Moon’s art includes some conspicuous American ingredients, Ando’s work might seem to be purely Asian. Unlike Moon, Ando is a lifelong American citizen. And all the pieces inAndo's AU show — and the show itself, “Kumo” — are titled in Japanese. “Kumo” means cloud, and much of the artist’s minimalist work depicts transient atmospheric phenomena. Ando may contemplate the sky merely for its subtle beauty. But ephemeral mist and light might also represent Buddhist teachings about eternal change and life’s impermanence. [More]

United States officials return 3,800 smuggled ancient artifacts to Iraq

ARTDAILY

The artifacts include many tablets from the ancient city of Irisagrig, primarily from the Ur III and Old Babylonian period, are mostly legal and administrative documents, but also include a collection of Early Dynastic incantations and a bilingual religious text from the Neo-Babylonian period. Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP.

WASHINGTON (AFP).- US officials on Wednesday returned to Iraq 3,800 ancient artifacts that had been smuggled into the United States and shipped to a nationwide arts and crafts retailer. The items include cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, and clay bullae. Many of the tablets come from the ancient city of Irisagrig and date back to 2100-1600 BCE, officials said. Packages of cuneiform tablets were initially intercepted by customs agents and falsely labeled as tile samples for retailer Hobby Lobby. The company last year agreed to forfeit thousands of ancient Iraqi artifacts and pay $3 million to settle a civil suit brought by the US government, attributing its purchase of the illegally imported items to naivete. [More]

Trump inauguration Bible heads to museum

CRUX

President Trump, left, takes the oath of office from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, right, with Trump’s wife, Melania, and children Donald, Barron, Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany at his side during inauguration ceremonies at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017. (Credit: Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters.)

One of the two Bibles Donald Trump used to take the oath of office is joining others used by American presidents at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. The Revised Standard Version edition Bible given to the future 45th president of the United States by his mother when he was a child is the same Bible he used when he attended First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y. In January 2017, President-elect Trump showed the hard-bound Bible to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and described an inscription Trump said was made by his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, who died in 2000. [More]

Muslim leader encourages fellow Muslims to visit Museum of the Bible

CHRISTIAN HEADLINES
By Amanda Casanova

WASH., DC---A Washington, D.C. imam, a Muslim leader, is encouraging his Muslim friends to visit the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. The Muslim leader is just one of many different types of people that are visiting the museum and enjoying its exhibits. The president of the museum, Cary Summers, told media last week at the National Religious Broadcaster’s International Christian Media Convention that the imam visited the museum with his family and later told Summers what he thought of the facility. "We had one of the imams from one of the mosques in Washington come and spend three hours [at the museum]; he brought his wife and five daughters," Summers said. "He saw me a week later and he told me that he had been there, which I knew, and I said, 'What did you think?' And he said, 'I'm telling you, every Muslim, they should come to this museum.'”[More]

Attendance to Museum of the Bible rises above expectations three months after opening

CHRISTIAN DAILY
By Rachel Cruz

(REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque)A woman looks at a Bible inside the Museum of the Bible. November 15, 2017.

The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. opened its doors to the public in November 2017, and its president, Cary Summers, revealed that he is pleased by the visitor turnout. Summers relayed to Christian News Journal that attendance to the museum had been "above expectations" so far and they had to increase sites where guests could take a break from sightseeing to eat. According to reports, 200,000 people have actually been to the Museum of the Bible two months after it opened. The Museum of the Bible stands at a 430,000 square foot property that took $500 million from the family that owns Hobby Lobby to build. Its main presentations are interactive and digital, touching on the Bible's history that can also be personalized for visitors depending on their ages. [More]

The Green family’s other collection comes to Museum of the Bible

THE GAZETTE
By David Van Biema

The Museum of the Bible's main entrance, featuring the Gutenberg Gates, in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 1, 2017. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

WASHINGTON, DC---In an empty case on the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible, a label explains: “The loaned articles intended for display here are still in transit.” The display, at the beginning of the “History of the Bible” gallery, symbolizes perfectly how the principles guiding the development of the museum, which opened in November just off the Washington Mall, have lagged behind its headlong physical growth. The promised loans are replacements for materials yanked from the exhibit because of what a museum official calls “guilt by association” with thousands of cuneiform tablets that the Green family, the museum’s founders and its main funders, was forced to return last July, along with a payment of $3 million. [More]

Prints of La Verna explore Franciscan heavenly imagery at the National Gallery of Art

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Nicolò Boldrini after Titian, Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, c. 1530, woodcut, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

WASHINGTON, DC—One of the most innovative Italian books of the early baroque period, the Descrizione del Sacro Monte della Vernia, published in 1612, illustrates the experiences of Saint Francis and the buildings of the Franciscan community at La Verna. Drawing from the Gallery's rich holdings of works with Franciscan imagery, "Heavenly Earth: Images of Saint Francis at La Verna" contextualizes this publication alongside some 30 traditional representations from the late 15th through the mid-18th century. Heavenly Earth will be on view on the ground floor of the West Building from February 25 through July 8, 2018. On view in the exhibition will be two first-edition copies of the Descrizione del Sacro Monte della Vernia, acquired by the Gallery in 2012 and 2013. [More]

A groundbreaking show presents a new, inclusive vision of American art

NEW YORK TIMESBy Roberta Smith

William H. Johnson’s “John Brown Legend,” circa 1945, makes the abolitionist its central image and shows him coming down from a cross and being greeted by a mother and her child. This rarely exhibited work is part of “Outliers and American Vanguard Art,” at the National Gallery.CreditSmithsonian American Art Museum, via National Gallery

WASHINGTON — Anyone interested in American modernism should see “Outliers and American Vanguard Art” at the National Gallery of Art. Flaws and all, this groundbreaking adventure highlights outstanding, sometimes rarely-seen artworks; revives neglected histories; and reframes the contributions of self-taught artists to this country’s rich visual culture. Limiting its scope to American art, it tries to map the intersections of taught and untaught over the last century, examining not only the place of self-taught art now but how it got here. It is extensive: about 280 artworks by 84 artists — and Ms. Cooke has organized them chronologically, in three sections. [link]

The Museum of the Bible Is a safe space for Christian Nationalists

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Katherine Stewart

Visitors at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. Credit Lexey Swall for The New York Times

LOOKING at it, you’d think that the Museum of the Bible was, in fact, a museum. But the organizers of Revolution 2017, a recent gathering at the museum featuring speakers who intend to “transform nations” by “igniting a holy reformation in every sphere of society,” know better. “We wholeheartedly believe the Museum of the Bible represents an ‘Ark of the Covenant’ for our nation, bearing witness to his goodness,” they proclaimed in their promotional material. The museum is a safe space for Christian nationalists, and that is the key to understanding its political mission. The aim isn’t anything so crude as the immediate conversion of tourists to a particular variety of evangelical Christianity. Its subtler task is to embed a certain set of assumptions in the landscape of the capital. [More]

An exhibition in the US celebrates Estonia’s Renaissance artist Michel Sittow

ESTONIAN WORLD

"Assumption of the Virgin" (circa 1500) by Michel Sittow. National Gallery of Art - Washington DC (United States):

WASH., DC---A new exhibition opens this month at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC to celebrate Michel Sittow, an Estonian master of the early Netherlandish art. Considered Estonia’s greatest Renaissance artist, Sittow (c. 1469–1525) was sought after by the renowned European courts of his day, including those of King Ferdinand of Aragón and Queen Isabella of Castile, Philip the Handsome, Margaret of Austria and Christian II of Denmark. The exhibition of Sittow’s works will be held from 28 January to 13 May. Among the highlights are "The Assumption of the Virgin" (c. 1500/1504, National Gallery of Art) and "The Ascension of Christ" (c. 1500/1504, private collection). [More]

‘Encountering the Buddha’ at Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.

BLOUIN ARTINFO

Detail, The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room from the Alice S. Kandell Collection Photograph: 2010 Objects: Tibet, China, and Mongolia, 13th–20th century Mixed media Gifts and promised gifts from the Alice S. Kandell Collection (Courtesy: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery)

WASH., DC---The exhibition titled “Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia” is currently on view at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. The show highlights the role and function of art and place as central to Buddhist understanding and teachings. The selections of works on display are drawn from the Freer and Sackler collections of Buddhist art. It features more than 250 pieces from India to Indonesia and Afghanistan to Japan coupled with two immersive environments and integrated digital platforms. “Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia” narrate the stories of Buddhist objects and artworks. [More]

Synagogue’s mix of arts and religion helps shape Jewish life in Wash., DC

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Noah Weiland

The synagogue reopened in 2004 after serving as a Methodist church and nearly becoming a night club. Credit Jared Soares for The New York Times

WASHINGTON, DC---On a wet night in August, in a bare room in the basement of the Sixth and I synagogue, one of Washington’s oldest, the comedian Joe Mande was preparing backstage for his stand-up set. While other Jewish organizations have tried a culture-centric model — the 92nd Street Y in New York is perhaps the best-known example — Sixth and I’s blend of the religious and the artistic has become a local template, a convergence of intellectual and spiritual currents that has helped shape the character of Judaism in Washington. At a time when young Jews see synagogue affiliations as less of a social obligation, Sixth and I’s nonmembership, ticketed model has given them a way to be spiritually self-structured, to come and go, to pay by the activity.[More]

DC's new Bible museum could change the museum business

THE WASHINGTON POST

By Philip Kennicott

The $500 million Museum of the Bible opens this weekend. (Essdras M Suarez/for The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON, DC---When the Museum of the Bible opens this weekend, it will set a new standard for how this country’s museums fuse entertainment and education. It is rich in content, stocked with historic treasures and carefully plotted to appeal to audiences of all ages. It brings to museum design the sophisticated marketing intelligence of the Oklahoma City-based Green family, who have used a fortune made from the Hobby Lobby retail chain to promote evangelical Christian causes. Their latest venture is a museum that offers a one-stop-shopping cultural experience, with history, art, architecture, theater and music conveniently packaged under one roof. [More]

New DC museum invites visitors to 'engage' with the Bible

NPR
By Tom Gjelten

The Museum of the Bible is located near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The entrance is flanked by large bronze doors re-creating the first page of the Book of Genesis. Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR

WASH, DC---The newest museum in Washington, D.C., is a $500 million institution dedicated to a single book. The privately funded Museum of the Bible, set to open Nov. 17, will focus on biblical history, biblical stories and the Bible's impact on the world. "We only have one mission statement," says Cary Summers, the museum president, "and that is to engage people with the Bible." Summers and other museum officials insist the institution has no sectarian or evangelical agenda, even though the museum is largely the brainchild of Steve Green, the CEO of Hobby Lobby — the family-owned craft store chain known for supporting conservative Christian causes. [More]

Museum of the Bible set to open this week

THE CHRISTIAN HEADLINES

The highly anticipated Museum of the Bible is opening in Washington D.C. this Friday, November 17. CBN News recently spoke with Museum co-founders Steve and Jackie Green about their vision for this project and their hope for what it will accomplish. Steve Green explained that they first began requiring historical, and particularly, biblically significant, artifacts in 2009: "So it's been a fairly rapid journey and as our collection grew, that's when the family really felt the sense of responsibility that we needed to make sure that this dream of a Bible museum became a reality," said Green. The Museum of the Bible promises to be “an innovative, global, educational institution whose purpose is to invite all people to engage with the history, narrative and impact of the Bible,” according to its website. [More]

The Museum of the Bible opens Friday. Here’s what to expect at its restaurants.

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Holley Simmons

The Autumn Harvest Rice Blend, with butternut squash, falafel, za'atar, roasted vegetables and cumin tahini at Manna Restaurant. (Essdras M. Suarez for The Washington Post)

WASH, DC---Ellen Kassoff Gray admits that she and her husband, Todd, love getting geeky when it comes to food history. It's one of the reasons the couple was interested in developing dishes for the Museum of the Bible's two dining concepts. Her time in Israel, and their research on the cultural aspects of religion, helped spark Milk & Honey, a casual cafe, and Manna, a cafeteria-style restaurant serving Israeli street food, at the museum. Milk & Honey (Ellen: “What else would a Jewish girl call her cafe?”) is on the museum's mezzanine level. The small 70-seater serves coffee and espresso drinks made with beans from Missouri-based Churchill Coffee, grab-and-go sandwiches ($9-$11), salads ($7-$10), fresh-squeezed juice and pastries. [More]

Biblical History at What Cost? Hobby Lobby, the Museum of the Bible and the antiquities market

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY
By Roberta Mazza • 07/24/2017

This cuneiform tablet is one of the thousands of ancient objects purchased by Hobby Lobby that was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Photo: United States Department of Justice.

On July 5, 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York issued a press release stating that a civil complaint was filed to forfeit thousands of cuneiform tablets and clay bullae originating from modern Iraq and smuggled into the United States through the United Arab Emirates and Israel. As explained in the complaint available online, these artifacts (over 3,500 items) were purchased in the context of amassing what is known as the Green collection—around 40,000 objects of various kinds, from ancient papyri to modern prints of the Bible, assembled by the Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. This collection was meant to form the core of what is nowadays known as the Museum of the Bible, which opens in Washington, D.C. in November. [More]

The Museum of the Bible references Islam twice, and other things we learned on our tour

PBS NEWS HOUR
By Elizabeth Flock

WASH, DC---The Museum of the Bible, the sprawling, 430,000-square-foot tribute to the good book, has been dogged by controversies long before opening day. It’s been criticized for not including enough Jesus, for excluding various religious traditions, and for being evangelical propaganda. The museum is funded by evangelical businessman Steve Green, the head of craft-store giant Hobby Lobby, who has maintained the museum will be nonsectarian. It is slated to oepn next week just blocks from the U.S. Capitol and National Mall. Now that the museum is finally finished (or close to it), its detractors will finally see whether their concerns are justified, and the nearly 50 percent of Americans who regularly turn to the Bible will have an opportunity to learn more. [More]