BMW Bob Jones University Upcountry Museum
Bob Jones University
Bob Jones University
Bob Jones University (BJU) is a private, for-profit, non-denominational Protestant university in Greenville, South Carolina.
The university was founded in 1927 by evangelist Bob Jones, Sr. (1883–1968); and
the current president, Stephen Jones, is the great-grandson of the founder and
the fourth consecutive member of the Jones family to serve as president.
Since 2005 BJU has been accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian
Colleges and Schools, a national accrediting organization recognized by the
Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The
university enrolls approximately 3,800 students representing every state and
fifty foreign countries, employs a staff of 1,450, and conducts precollege
education from pre-kindergarten through high school. In 2008, the university
estimated the number of its graduates at 35,000.
Established in 1927 near Panama City, on the Florida panhandle, Bob Jones
College moved to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933, and to its present campus in
Greenville, South Carolina in 1947, where it became Bob Jones University. There
have been four presidents: Bob Jones, Sr. (1927–1947); Bob Jones, Jr.
(1947–1971); Bob Jones III, (1971–2005); and Stephen Jones, (2005 to the
present).
From its inception, BJU has been located in the South "but has never had a
predominantly southern constituency." In 2006, the state with the largest number
of students enrolled was South Carolina, but many of these were married students
who had moved from other parts of the country to attend the University. Other
states with large representations in the student body are Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio.
The university occupies 205 acres at the eastern city limit of Greenville. The
institution moved into its initial 25 buildings during the 1947-48 school year.
Additional buildings have been constructed on an average of more than one per
year, and most have been faced with light yellow brick similar to that chosen
for the original buildings.
Bob Jones, Jr. was a connoisseur of European art and began collecting after
World War II on about $30,000 a year authorized by the University Board of
Directors. Jones first concentrated on the Italian Baroque, a style then out of
favor and relatively inexpensive in the years immediately following the war.
Fifty years after the opening of the gallery, the BJU collection included more
than 400 European paintings from the 14th to through the 19th centuries (mostly
pre-19th century), period furniture, and a notable collection of Russian icons.
The museum also includes a variety of Holy Land antiquities collected in the
early twentieth century by missionaries Frank and Barbara Bowen. Not
surprisingly, the gallery is especially strong in Baroque paintings and includes
notable works by Rubens, Tintoretto, Veronese, Cranach, Gerard David, Murillo,
Mattia Preti, Ribera, van Dyck, and Doré. Included in the Museum & Gallery
collection are seven very large canvases, part of a series by Benjamin West
painted for George III, called "The Progress of Revealed Religion," which are
displayed in the War Memorial Chapel. (Baroque art was created during—and often
for—the Counter-Reformation and so, ironically, BJU has been criticized by some
other fundamentalists for promoting “false Catholic doctrine” through its art
gallery.)
After the death of Bob Jones, Jr., Erin Jones, the wife of BJU president Stephen
Jones became director. According to David Steel, curator of European art at the
North Carolina Museum of Art, Erin Jones "brought that museum into the modern
era," employing "a top-notch curator, John Nolan," and following "best practices
in conservation and restoration." The museum now regularly cooperates with other
institutions, lending works for outside shows such as a Rembrandt exhibit in
2011.
In 2008, the BJU Museum & Gallery opened a satellite location, the "Museum &
Gallery at Heritage Green" near downtown Greenville, which features rotating
exhibitions from the main museum as well as interactive children's activities.
The Heritage Green building, an extensively remodeled Coca-Cola bottling plant,
joined the neighboring Upcountry History Museum and the Greenville Children's
Museum, all of which feature "the latest in museum technology."
Each Easter season, the university and the Museum & Gallery present the Living
Gallery, a series of tableaux vivants recreating noted works of religious art
using live models disguised as part of two-dimensional paintings.
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BMW Bob Jones University Upcountry Museum
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