Take That, New York!

And the winner of the heated competition to be the only American city to be allowed to exhibit the Dead Sea Scrolls this year is… drum roll… Grand Rapids, Michigan? As a matter of fact, yes, and it may be more appropriate than you think. Grand Rapids, while certainly far from being a bustling metropolis, is a deeply religious community, and the exhibition, which will bring fragments of 12 manuscripts from the famous Scrolls to a local museum, is expected to draw visitors from all over the Rust Belt area of the Midwest. Curators hope that their coup will be a reminder to the arts world that people everywhere can appreciate art and artifacts – even people who don’t live in New York or Chicago.