The collection of Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum—more than seventeen thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312—includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The areas represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: much of Asia Minor on the periphery of Greece was settled by Greeks; Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized in the course of its long history; and Greek colonies were established around much of the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the political expansion of Rome. The department also exhibits the pre-Greek art of Greece and the pre-Roman art of Italy.
Today, the objects in the department range from small, engraved gemstones to black-figure and red-figure painted vases to over-life-size statues and reflect virtually all of the materials in which ancient artists and craftsmen worked: marble, limestone, terracotta, bronze, gold, silver, and glass, as well as such rarer substances as ivory and bone, iron, lead, amber, and wood. The selection of highlights from the Department of Greek and Roman Art presented online are organized first by geographical region and, within regions, chronologically. Regions are also presented in chronological order according to when the ancient civilization flourished in that region.
More about the Department and Its Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's very first accessioned object was a Roman sarcophagus from Tarsus, donated in 1870. Among the Museum's first directors were the classical archaeologists General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who held the post from 1879 to 1904, and Edward Robinson, from 1910 to 1931. After 1905 the Museum was purchasing actively in the field with income from the Rogers Fund, established in 1901 by a bequest of Jacob S. Rogers, a manufacturer of locomotives. Moreover, the laws of partage were still in effect, so that the Museum was permitted to share the discoveries made with local departments of antiquities at its excavations around the Mediterranean, such as at Sardis. Despite these propitious conditions for the acquisition of ancient art, and the large number of objects that were indeed acquired, an independent Department of Classical Art was not established formally until 1909; in 1935 it was renamed the Department of Greek and Roman Art.
The Metropolitan's galleries reveal classical art in all of its complexity and resonance. The strengths of the collection include painted Greek vases, Greek grave reliefs, Cypriot sculpture, marble and bronze Roman portrait busts, and wall paintings from two villas on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, one at Boscoreale and the other at Boscotrecase. The department's holdings in glass and silver are among the finest in the world, and the collection of archaic Attic sculpture is second only to that in Athens.
Special exhibitions based on the Metropolitan's collection of Greek and Roman art, supplemented with loans from other museums around the world, are another important part of the department's mission.
The Museum recently completed a fifteen-year master plan to renovate the exhibition spaces for Greek and Roman art and reinstall the entire collection. The first phase was achieved in June 1996 with the opening of The Robert and Renée Belfer Court for prehistoric and early Greek art. The second phase, seven galleries for Greek art of the archaic and classical periods (sixth through fourth century B.C.), opened in April 1999. With objects arranged in a new contextual display combining works of many media, the New Greek Galleries embrace such themes as religion, funerary customs, civic life, and athletics, in magnificent Beaux-Arts spaces created for the collection between 1912 and 1917 by the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White. The grand, barrel-vaulted gallery in the center of the installation—now known as the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery—is one of New York City's great interior spaces, flooded with natural light and ideal for exhibiting large-scale marble sculpture, bronzes, and vases.
The department's extensive collection of Cypriot art returned to view in April 2000 in four newly renovated galleries on the second floor. The culmination of the reinstallation took place in April 2007 with the opening of spaces for Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman Art. With more than 5,300 objects on view in an area of more than 30,000 square feet, the focal point is the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court—a monumental, skylit peristyle for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art with a soaring two-story atrium. The new galleries present many of the most important and familiar masterworks in the Greek and Roman collection; they are included in the collection highlights.
The Study Collection in the new area supplements the objects on view in the primary galleries and a special exhibition gallery allows for temporary displays.
