Want Catholic Art in USA? Head to Bob Jones University

WASHINGTON POST | BLOG
By John Gibson

Bob Jones University Art Museum Gallery lll

SOUTH CAROLINA - Walking across the tidy campus of Bob Jones University, there’s no obvious sign this bastion of Christian fundamentalism is also home to one of the nation’s largest collections of Renaissance and Baroque religious art from the heart of Catholic Europe [BJU Museum]. It’s all the more surprising since the school’s old-time Protestant leaders have for years taught that Catholicism is a “cult” and even the “Mother of Harlots.”  Just as surprising as the collection itself, however, is that the man who started it 60 years ago was Bob Jones Jr., the school’s second president and the son of the university’s namesake. “He really thought that paintings can reach people and talk to people in ways that that reading books cannot,” said David Steel, curator of European art at the North Carolina Museum of Art and a longtime fan of the BJU collection. [link]