The Museum of Biblical Art Is Closing

The Museum of Biblical Art, a 10-year-old Manhattan institution which “celebrates and interprets art inspired by the Bible,” announced Tuesday it will shut down in June. The closing will come after the conclusion of its most popular show ever, a rapturously reviewed exhibit of Donatello sculptures that have never been seen in the United States. Why couldn’t this respected institution survive? The answer isn’t flattering to either secular art patrons or religious ones.

MOBIA opened under the auspices of the American Bible Society, an organization devoted to Bible translation and distribution. In 2005, it spun off into its current entity, an independent secular and scholarly museum devoted to examining the Bible’s influence on Western art. But it has never been able to shake off its association with the Christian ministry, from which it still receives important support, including $1 annual rent on its gallery spaces and offices near Columbus Circle. The ABS’s impending move to Philadelphia would have required the museum to find a new home in Manhattan, at a cost of at least $1.5 million a year. That would have been a major ongoing fundraising challenge for a mid-size museum with a current operating budget between $2.5 million and $3.5 million, but it shouldn’t be impossible in the millionaire’s playground of Manhattan.