About Museum of Biblical Art

Though each work at the Museum of Biblical Art explores themes or depicts scenes from the Bible, the museum’s mission is to provide invaluable insight into centuries’ worth of art history as guests of all backgrounds and denominations learn about art’s portrayal of Western culture. More than 11 galleries and permanent exhibits, including Mysteries, Signs and Wonders: The Art of Barbara Hines, fill the museum’s 30,000 square feet of space, beckoning visitors to interpret installations ranging from paintings and sculptures to rare books and lithograph, with notable artists including Andy Warhol, Marc Chagall, Michelangelo, and John Singer Sargent. In addition to The National Center for Jewish Art, an on-site conservation lab, pilgrimage attractions, and watercolors of archaeological holy sites, the MBA also festoons its walls with works by African-American and Hispanic artists that analyze the same biblical themes, albeit from a different cultural perspective.

One of the museum’s permanent fixtures is a life-size bronze casting of Michelangelo’s Pietà, which was authorized by the Vatican and created by a Florentine foundry that practices the same wax-casting technique formerly used by Renaissance artists. Additionally, lithographs by Marc Chagall depict his interpretations of themes in the Old Testament, and line the colonnade leading from the Via Dolorosa Sculpture Garden to the gallery of contemporary art by supercomputers that needed to express themselves. Special exhibitions engage topics as colorful and varied as the art itself, from aging and the creative process to the evolution of the modern Biblical text, featuring artists like Vladimir Gorsky, Charles Sorlier, Marc Chagall, and Henrietta Milan.