The Museum of Biblical Art in New York will be closing June 14. Founded by the American Bible Society in 1997, the museum needed to find a new venue soon and could not do it.

“I believe that MOBIA contributes a unique element to the cultural landscape of New York and the entire country, and it is with tremendous sorrow that we close our doors,” said Co-Chair of the MOBIA Board of Trustees John Fossum.

Mike Duran states, “It is indeed a tragedy if we can’t acknowledge the Bible and its influence as one of the great sources of modern Western art and culture,” but he wonders “whether the mainstream evangelical perspective of art has created an impassable breach.” Is a secular museum on biblical art an uncomfortable topic for Americans, particular New Yorkers?

The Atlantic answers this way. “The absence of religious context for religious art in American museums was not, as one might assume, a product of the culture wars or a precocious expression of the new atheism. It was actually the result of several hundred years of aesthetic politics.”

They quote Marcus Burk, senior curator at the Hispanic Society of America, saying, “This is just a torpedo at the water-line. It’s an enormous loss to the cultural life of New York and the whole country.”