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ArchDC Spring 2018.qxp_Fall 2017 2/22/18 9:12 AM Page 23 Photo © Alan Karchmer Architectural Photographer

surprise: “We did have to install and design an electric boiler to brickwork, decorative balcony frits, and apertures in acoustic panels.
accommodate the burning bush,” Ghorbanian says. On the same Former loading docks on the building’s north side now allow day-
floor, the New Testament has its own immersive (though seated) light into the ground-floor lobby. “We’re not detaching the history
film experience. There’s also an approximation of the village of of the building from the history of the Bible,” Greenbaum says.
Nazareth, populated by costumed historical interpreters along the Still, the history of the Museum of the Bible is not without
lines of those at Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg. controversy. Despite its stance as a non-sectarian celebration of a
If visitors require a more literal palate cleanser than the single book, the museum draws its financing (in addition to 27 tiers
circulation “sorbet,” the top floor of the museum includes Manna, of membership) largely from the National Christian Foundation
a restaurant with the feel of a market souk, directed by local Chef and the founders of Hobby Lobby, a for-profit craft supply chain
Todd Gray. Fresh herbs from the small outdoor garden beside the that is under legal scrutiny both for its religious-based stance on
restaurant’s communal tables augment Mediterranean-inspired emergency contraceptives for employees and for buying more
offerings such as “The Scholar’s Initiative,” which draws its name than 3,000 smuggled religious artifacts in illegal acquisitions.
from the museum’s research-in-residency program that is However one feels about the politics and ethics of the institution’s
housed in a 30,000-square-foot addition above the Washington key supporters, as a work of architecture, the Museum of the Bible
Office Center. is a tour de force. With days’ worth of exhibitions to explore, the
The scale and complexity of the museum notwithstanding, the museum is wagering its success not just on the idea that people
architectural team still found ways to include details that reference will come, but that they’ll keep coming back. The museum is, if
its folio themes, with effects akin to paper deckle edges found in not one of biblical proportions, certainly one of high ambitions.

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