Director of NYC's Museum of Biblical Art is stepping down

USA TODAY
By David Van Biema

Photo of Heller courtesy of International Arts Movement

NEW YORK - Ena Heller, the founding director of the Museum of Biblical Art in New York. Heller will leave the museum after 15 years of service as it fights to secure funding and maintain the lease on its location near Lincoln Center.  Now, however, the future of one of the smaller and more eccentric pearls in the city's cultural crown looks less certain as Heller steps down in July, its main financial lifeline gets cut in 2015 and the museum is dogged by rumors that it will lose its $1-a-year lease on Broadway near Lincoln Center. The museum is a unique institution: the agnostic offspring of a missionary organization, founded in 1997 when the Bible Society decided to capitalize on its prime real estate with a gallery. It recruited Heller and accepted her main proviso: that the gallery operate free of any faith identification. [link]