Today more than fifty percent of the world’s people are affiliated with religions that trace their roots to Abraham… and yet the “promised land” — where Sufi dervishes whirl in ecstatic communion with the Beloved, where Jews daily celebrate their ancient heritage, and where Christians make their pilgrimage — is more readily known as a place where the Abrahamic peoples seem unable to coexist in freedom, dignity, and love.

Through art, we have a unique opportunity to remind one another of our common ancestry; to begin to visualize a more harmonious and unified world. With the hope that art can help to heal these painful divisions, Episcopal Church & Visual Arts (ECVA) is delighted to announce the launch of the exhibition Under Abraham’s Tent, curated by Bowie Snodgrass, Executive Director of Faith House Manhattan.

“Each piece of art in this exhibition,” says Snodgrass, “is a prayer or meditation on all that God embraces under Abraham’s tent… This collection calls for harmony among all God’s children, joyous in our diversity, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, connected in a long lineage and a kaleidoscope of colors, traditions, and prayers that all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Images above: Top — "Our Father, Abraham" by Linda Hunter; Middle (and on front-page mastheads) — Photo Collage by Wilfredo Benitez; Bottom — "And I Will Bless You" by Barbara Desrosiers.

Words above by Diane Walker, ECVA Exhibitions Director