The spectacular redesign and reinstallation of the Museum's superb collection of classical art is nearing completion. On April 20, 2007, the New Greek and Roman Galleries, which include the dramatic Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, will be unveiled, concluding a 15-year project and returning thousands of works from the Museum's permanent collection to public view.
The new galleries will house objects created between about 900 B.C. and the early fourth century A.D. Works on view will trace the evolution of Greek art in the Hellenistic period and the arts of southern Italy and Etruria, culminating in the rich and varied world of the Roman Empire. First-floor galleries will be dedicated to Hellenistic and Roman art, and the wholly redesigned mezzanine level—which overlooks the stunning new court from two sides—will include galleries for Etruscan art as well as the Greek and Roman study collection. Together, the astonishing assembly of works on display—some never before seen by the public—will bring to life the aesthetic and philosophical roots of Western civilization.
For more than 50 years, this vast space—originally designed to exhibit Greek and Roman art—has been used for other purposes. In fact, many visitors may know it as the former public restaurant that was constructed in 1950 and to which a cafeteria was later added. The reclamation of this space for the display of classical art was first envisioned in the 1970 master plan for the entire Museum, and advanced when the Museum launched its Greek and Roman Master Plan in the early 1990s. The project has proceeded in phases: in 1996, the Metropolitan opened its galleries for prehistoric and early Greek art, followed by the new Greek and Cypriot art galleries in 1999 and 2000, respectively.
The focal point of the new galleries is the spectacular Leon Levy and Shelby White Court for Hellenistic and Roman art, which occupies an area originally created between 1912 and 1926 by the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. The atrium, designed to evoke the ambulatory garden of a large private Roman villa, has been transformed through the addition of a second story and a dazzling colored marble floor. The much grander treatment befits the space's new role as the culmination of the display of the Museum's Greek and Roman collection. Although the new design introduces several features, it remains faithful to the architects' original concept: a classically inspired architectural style and a glass roof that allows the objects below to be viewed in natural daylight. On view in the center of the court will be nearly 20 Roman sculptures created between the first century B.C. and the third century A.D. that demonstrate a range of materials, styles, and subject matter.
Although examples from the Metropolitan's vast resource of Hellenistic and Roman art have been on view since the Museum opened in 1870, a lack of adequate permanent exhibition space has limited the public's access to a large percentage of exceptionally fine works. The new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court will provide a grand stage for a comprehensive installation of the largest selection of these works ever shown at the Met, including portraits of famous—and infamous—Roman emperors such as Augustus, Caligula, and Antoninus Pius. A display of Roman funerary sculpture, featuring the highly ornate Badminton Sarcophagus with its depiction of the triumph of the god Dionysus, will also be on view, and architectural fragments from the emperor Domitian's palace on the Palatine in Rome will be displayed here for the first time in many years.
The galleries surrounding the new Roman Court will present a substantial number of works from the Museum's rich collection of Hellenistic art as well as the arts of South Italy and Sicily. The display of these works will provide a vital artistic and historical link between the Greek and the new Roman galleries. Of particular interest will be a new Hellenistic Treasury.
The galleries along Fifth Avenue will house the Museum's collection of wall paintings from the Roman villas excavated at Boscoreale and Boscotrecase, unquestionably the finest examples of their type outside of Italy. They include the Cubiculum (bedroom) from Boscoreale, which will be installed at the center of the wing, alongside the other panels from the same villa. For the first time in decades, visitors will be able to view these masterpieces in the proper context of sculpture, bronzes, and other arts of the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods.
An expansive new balcony overlooking the Roman Court will be devoted to Etruscan art, featuring the world-famous Etruscan chariot as its centerpiece. The chariot has undergone a major restoration preparatory to its return to permanent public view for the first time since the early 1990s.
These new galleries will present more than 5,300 works of art, some of which have not been on view in decades, and that have never before been available to the public. Highlights include a bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer (Greek, third century B.C.). The effect of this remarkable bronze depends exclusively on the pose of the dancer and the treatment of the drapery. The woman's face is covered with a sheer veil, which can be discerned at its edge below her hairline and at the cutouts for the eyes. Her right foot is extended, showing a laced slipper. The dancer has been identified as one of the professional entertainers, a combination of mime and dancer, for which the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria was famous in antiquity. The composition and articulation of folds over the body of this figure are without equal. Also on view will be the Statue of an Old Market Woman, a Roman statue from the first century A.D. that presents a realistic depiction of an elderly woman in an elegant dress, thong sandals, and a crown of Dionysiac ivy leaves. She is dressed for a festival, and the chickens and basket of fruit she carries are probably offerings for Dionysus, god of wine.
Another stunning work is the life-size Bronze Statue of a Boy (Roman, Augustan period, late first century B.C.–early first century A.D.) depicting a youth on the threshold of adulthood. Treasured more highly than marble, bronze statues were common in the Hellenistic and Roman periods but were routinely melted down in later periods, making this life-size bronze a rare treasure.
The Museum has one of the finest collections of ancient glass in the world. A beautiful glass garland bowl (Roman, late first century B.C.) features four roughly equal sections in translucent purple, yellow, blue, and colorless glass that are further ornamented by four hanging garlands of millefiori glass, one of which is fused to the upper surface of each quadrant. Very few vessels made of differently colored glass sections are known from antiquity, and this is the only example that combines the technique with fused-on decoration. A masterpiece of glassmaking, it was created at the time when cast-glass was being supplanted by glass made by the newly invented technique of glassblowing.
Etruscan artists distinguished themselves as gem carvers and goldsmiths, and their jewelry is among the finest in the entire ancient world. The so-called "Morgan amber" (Etruscan, ca. 500 B.C.) shows a couple reclining on a couch. The most complex and most important carved amber surviving from ancient Italy, it came to the Museum with the bequest of the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. The woman wears a pointed hat, long cloak and pointed shoes. Her companion is a young beardless man. Holes in the base contain traces of a bronze pin, suggesting that this luxury object was a decorative element on a fibula (the pin used to secure clothing). The amber came from the Baltic Sea.
The richest and most impressive set of Etruscan Jewelry ever found (late archaic Etruscan, early fifth century B.C.) contains items made of finely worked gold, glass, rock crystal, agate, and carnelian. The set comprises a splendid gold and glass pendant necklace, a pair of gold and rock-crystal disk earrings, a gold fibula decorated with a sphinx, a pair of plain gold fibulae, a gold dress pin, and five finger rings. Two of the rings have engraved scarabs; one is decorated with embossed satyr heads, and the other two have decorated gold bezels.
View more selected highlights of Greek and Roman art from the collection.
Visit the Timeline of Art History to learn more about Greek and Roman art through the Museum's collection.
Visit our Press Room for more details about the opening of the New Greek and Roman Galleries, including sponsorship information and installation credits.
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