16 December 2015
Where do you seek refuge from the world? Religion? Family? Sport? Images circulating in the news and on social media in recent days of a controversial structure that opened to the public this week in northern Kentucky demonstrate the extraordinary lengths to which some people will go to protect themselves from unwanted cultural pressures. Photographs of an enormous $100 million (£77 million) replica of Noah’s Ark, built by the creationist ministry Answers in Genesis, call to mind the obsessive brilliance of an American folk artist from the 19th Century, whose own vision of the Bible’s apocalyptic vessel sheds intriguing light on mankind’s unquenchable quest to construct a sanctuary for the soul.