Carlos Picón, Curator in Charge, Department of Greek and Roman Art

Carlos Picón: It is a landmark event not only for New York and for our museum, and actually the whole country, because it is the first time, if you look at it historically, that you will be able to see the whole breadth of the collection, from prehistoric Greek to late Roman, since 1949. These galleries were built for Greek and Roman in the first quarter of the 20th century, and they lasted less than a quarter century, and they were turned into a restaurant and offices. They were put to other uses than Greek and Roman art. And half of the collection went into storage in 1949 and it's taken us over 60 years for it to be seen again. So basically you have not seen half of our holdings—our public has not seen half of our works of art in the Department of Greek and Roman—since 1949, and now you will get to see them in the logical progression, from the earliest Greek to the end of the Roman Empire.

We are featuring everything from the Hellenistic and Roman gods—the basic ones, for the Greeks and for the Latins—and we are—for the Roman Empire, of course—and we are also emphasizing one great aspect of Roman art, which is portraiture. And we have private portraiture, starting with the Republican, very veristic portraits, who look like people we may ourselves know, to the more idealized likenesses of the emperor and the imperial house. And we have a pretty good sequence of imperial likenesses, both in stone and bronze, and in other works of art—decorative arts of smaller scale, such as gems.

We run everybody from Augustus to Caligula to Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, and of course we end with Constantine, one of our most notable portraits, one of our largest ones—colossal, three, four times lifesize—in the end of our late Roman gallery.

The Metropolitan Museum is fortunate to have acquired in the first quarter of the last century, in the first quarter of the 20th century, two major sets of Roman frescoes, of wall paintings, architectural paintings, including one entire complete room, a cubiculum, a bedroom, from a villa in Boscoreale, dating to the last years towards the end of the first century B.C. And indeed these sets of paintings are the best found anywhere outside of Italy. And I think the architectural depictions, the vividness of the paintings, take us back to the days in the 70s of the first century A.D., when the eruption of Vesuvius covered all of Pompeii and the adjacent areas, including Boscoreale and Boscotrecase. All of these suburbs around Pompeii were destroyed at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius. And here we have, frozen in time, a glimpse of the ancient world of the first century after Christ.

You can assume that more than half of what you will see in these new galleries has not been on view since the late ’40s, because the galleries were closed and most of these objects were—entire categories, as a matter of fact—were put in storage. Most of our glass, certainly all of our terracottas, many of our stuccos, of our decorative arts, our Roman sculptures, the large architectural sculptures actually were never shown, only a handful of them. Now we can give you a selection which really mirrors the depth and the wealth of our holdings. It’s completely comprehensive without, I hope, being overwhelming.

You can see a progression of the art of the ancient classical world, from the earliest beginnings—let’s say, the fifth millennium in the Mediterranean, in the Aegean, the so—called Neolithic and Cycladic cultures of Greece—all the way through the end of the Roman Empire in a progression which is logical, which is treated chronologically, stylistically, and thematically. So within each suite of galleries, chronologically, you have particular areas devoted to certain topics, which I hope will bring the visitor back more than one time. This is not a collection which can be enjoyed in only an hour. It is displayed in a way that is manageable for those who only may have an hour or two to survey our holdings, but it is also designed to draw you back into particular discussions, particular aspects of the collection, which we trust will detain you when you have the time and the inclination to come back.

We start, for instance, in the archaic Greek galleries with depictions or an interpretation, a discussion of athletics in the ancient world, a topic which is absolutely central to Greek culture of the classical period. And the first thematic presentation is athletics in the ancient world—what are the objects which were created to fulfill this need—all the way to funerary arts, which were the beliefs of the ancient Greeks about their burial customs, about their funerary religious representations. In other topics, we have more historical approaches. We talk about the, for instance, the Roman gods, we talk about Roman medicine, Roman myths, and entertainment in the Roman Empire, whether it’s gladiatorial games or whether it’s entertainment in the Roman world.

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Additional video footage provides a quiet glimpse of the first visitors enjoying the serene beauty of the new galleries. Play the additional footage.

Read more about the works on view, or see a list of images of selected highlights.