It’s a quirky Dallas museum with three focal points: Jewish history, the Holocaust and biblical arts. Anyone with a firm grasp of Christian history should have an easy time following along. There are plenty of ancient oil lamps, ancient maps and ancient ceramics. The giant 10-meter mural of the resurrection of Christ is hidden away in a back room, so don’t miss that.
Laura Bush, the wife of George W. Bush, used to do yoga in the museum courtyard with her yoga instructor when she came home from DC during her husband’s presidency. It’s surrounded by statues of biblical figures and photographs of flowers from the Holy Land. Predictably, there are also a few reliquaries from the French Catholic Church and alter pieces from other European churches.
I had an hour-long chat with the head conservationist, Scott, and he told me that some of the quirkiness comes from his trying to give voice to female and ethnic minority artists, which led to the mix in ancient and contemporary art. The museum has the largest private collection of ancient Jewish maps and regularly rotates exhibits around. About 95% of everything they have is on display at any time with a small portion held back for restoration.
I was permitted to touch the scars on a marble statue of Jesus and clean a painting of him using my spit on a cotton swab. When the museum closed at five, Scott turned the lights off and showed me how to spot repair work on 400-year-old artwork with a black light and spot glue and lead adhesive on restored stained glass windows.
There were three highlights of my Dallas trip, a marriage proposal on Reunion Tower, chatting with a father of a convicted felon on the day of his son’s release in Wichita Falls, and spitting on a centuries-old oil painting.
