The Hobby Lobby family’s “Museum of the Bible” opens in Washington with fanfare and controversy over stolen antiquities. We’ll dive in.
This show airs Friday at 11 a.m. EST.
Guests:
Philip Kennicott, art and architecture critic for the Washington Post. (@PhilipKennicott)
Joel Baden, professor at Yale Divinity School and co-author of “Bible Nation: The United States Of Hobby Lobby.” (@JoelBaden)
Morag Kersel, archaeologist and associate professor of anthropology at DePaul University. (@MoKersel)
From Tom’s Reading List:
Washington Post: The New Bible Museum Tells A Clear, Powerful Story. And It Could Change The Museum Business. — “The new attraction is an up-to-date version of an old-fashioned museum, telling linear stories in a complex and detailed way. It doesn’t foreground trendy ideas about multiculturalism, and it isn’t “thematic,” or focused on broad ideas at the expense of chronological clarity. It gives a straightforward account of American history, from the first colonists to the civil rights era and beyond, through the prism of the Bible, but in a way that many visitors will probably find more compelling and accessible than the dense cultural stew on view at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.”
New York Times: Hobby Lobby’s Black Market Buys Did Real Damage — “But Hobby Lobby did participate in and perpetuate the same market from which ISIS profits. If collectors like the Green family were unwilling to purchase unprovenanced antiquities — items that do not have a clear and clean history of discovery and purchase — the black market would dry up. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. It is because collectors like Hobby Lobby are willing to pay a premium and look the other way that looting continues. They dramatically expanded the market for biblical antiquities in the late 2000s.”
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