I'm proud of the lil' Piedmont hamlet of my youth. I'm saving the bragging about the increasing and deserved public recognition of Greenville, South Carolina, for a future blog post. One of the not so redeeming features of my Carolina border town is the conservative culture wrought by Bob Jones University, headquartered there. If you're not from the Upstate region, you still may have heard of the religious institution because every Republican presidential contender since about Reagan has dropped in for an appearance there.

Folks, we're talking wildly, ultra conservative. Like in my youth, BJU downtown street preachers yelling to passerby at random: "YOU'RE GOING TO HELL!" Like BJU organized protesters of our city's esteemed Jewish Mayor's weekly ecumenical [that dirty word] prayer breakfast. Ugh.

"BJU" still requires its female students to wear skirts below their knees, keep their hair long; the males to don white shirts and ties and keep their hair short. I knew a few drop-outs who told stories of the dating parlors–akin to a large furniture store-room. (I saw it myself during a wedding I attended there.) Students were allowed to sit with their dates there but only so many inches a part and the rules progress even further into the disturbingly bizarre. Among BJU's religion-gone-wacky legacies are its' fervent anti-Catholicism and corresponding condemnation of "Fundie" icons Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberson. The powers that be there even deem Billy Graham as liberal. (ROFLMAO) Note of warning to Mit Romney: Bob Jones III has a thing against Mormons, too, labeling the religion, along with Catholicism "satanic counterfeit."

The school made national news long before conservative candidates began, controversially cow-towing to the school.  During the mid-70's BJU lost it's federal funding for not admitting African American students. Finally, the school reached a compromised by admitting Blacks only if they were married. (To prevent unequal yoking, of course.)

Ahem. Now to happier thoughts and to what this blog post is really about: As an educational institution, the school excells, at least in it's school of education. Our high school frequently had student teachers from there. And another plum, it's shining star–about which I never knew until I'd left Greenville for good, is the school's extensive religious art collection. About 15 years ago I visited it and was astounding! It is truly one of the most impressive collections and galleries I have ever visited.

So, all the negative commentary aside, it is agreed from the outside looking in that despite its' punitive religious culture, Bob Jones' University's art collection is progressive. I could not locate online the national television interview I watched a few years back where the interviewer sensitively noted this….

Once again: Art. Bridges. Worlds and Breaks Down Barriers.

In his hungry quest for divine art, Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., was a visionary.

"A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Painting from the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery," now at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts, offers new insight to this often overlooked collection.

Premiering at the Frist Center today, September 9 through February 5, 2012, 28 paintings from 15th- and 16th-century Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain grace the Frist Center's Upper Galleries. According to Frist: "The exhibition is conceived as an intimate encounter with the devotional art of the Renaissance and explores the way in which 15th- and 16th-century Northern European painters expressed the central mysteries of the Christian faith through setting, pose, gesture and the objects of everyday life.

"These paintings, which are part of a collection better known for its grand Baroque pictures, have been little studied since their acquisition in the mid-20th century. Since that time, considerable advances have been made in analytical methods and connoisseurship of Northern Renaissance paintings and additional archival research has been undertaken.  This exhibition presents the examples in the Bob Jones Collection in light of this recent research.

"Prior to the exhibition, the Frist Center sponsored the conservation of four key works, including, most importantly a beguiling Flemish picture known as the Madonna of the Fireplace, which was attributed to the Master of Flèmalle when it was part of the Cook Collection in England during the 19th century. […] The cleaning and restoration of all four paintings was conducted in the New York laboratory of noted paintings conservator David Bull."

“Very few people seem to be aware that Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery has this treasure trove of rare and beautiful Northern Renaissance paintings,” said Frist Center Associate Curator Trinita Kennedy, organizer of the exhibition.  “Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in London and many of the world’s major museums will see similarities in the works we are presenting here in Nashville.  We hope people will take this opportunity to see how the works from the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery relate to works in those more familiar collections.”

"Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., founder of the museum, collected only religious art and had a strong preference for images of the Virgin and Child, the Holy Family, the Passion and the Holy Face of Christ. This exhibition provides an excellent opportunity to focus attention on developments in alter pieces and devotional paintings during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Bob Jones Collection is one of the largest of its kind in the country, surpassing in size even the notable collections of Harvard, Yale and Princeton." More information at: www.fristcenter.org.

More from Frist Center on The Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery. The institution is "recognized as having one of America’s finest collections of Old Master paintings and is well known for its thorough presentation of the development of Western culture through these works.

Housed on the campus of Bob Jones University, the Museum & Gallery displays Italian, Spanish, French, English, Flemish, Dutch and German sacred art from the 14th through the 19th century.  Works by major artists such as Rubens, van Dyck, Reni and Tintoretto are exhibited with period furniture, sculpture, tapestries and porcelains to give visitors a panoramic view of artistic developments.

"Today, 50 years after its inauguration, the collection comprises more than 400 paintings by the Old Masters, nearly 200 pieces of Gothic to 19th-century furniture, approximately 100 works of sculpture, 60 textiles, nearly 50 drawings and prints, more than 1,000 Biblical artifacts and 130 miscellaneous items ranging from stained glass windows to a Byzantine baptistery font."

I'm looking forward to seeing portions of this magnificent art collection again. Are you planning to attend?   

(For the record, my dear, deceased mother received a her college associate's degree from Bob Jones University when it was in Cleveland, Tenn. She attended there with at least Ruth Graham if not Billy. Growing up, she always noted that the school she attended was not what it had become in our hometown. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if she ever saw their art collection. The school has also ended its' ban on interracial dating.)

About the painting above: Attributed to Jan Gossaert. "Madonna of the Fireplace," ca. 1500. Oil on panel, 33 x 22 1/8 in. Bob Jones Collection, 1952 [Stunning. Evocative. I couldn't bear to reduce the size to better fit. Notice the depth of the folds of the garments. According to BJU: "Although the Bible records no daily domestic duties that Mary attended to, she must have performed the many necessary, if mundane, tasks that motherhood requires." The artist depicted Mary warming her hands by the adjacent fireplace, to the left, "so that her hands would not be cold as she changed Christ's diaper." Sweet. On many levels.]