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Each year the Fall issue of the Museum's Bulletin, entitled New Acquisitions—A Selection, serves to highlight a few of the thousands of works of art that have entered the collections. The Museum's Conservation Departments all play an important role in the process of acquiring these purchases, gifts, and bequests, providing material and technological data that complements the stylistic and historic evaluation each work receives before it is accessioned. The current issue of met objectives includes articles that describe several notable acquisitions, and the unique technical questions each one presents, while illustrating how these additions often force both curators and conservators to look at the collections with new eyes. This issue also highlights the completion of the Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation at The Cloisters.
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Origin and Influence: Technical Evidence for Establishing Provenience
The Museum's Department of Asian Art recently acquired a gold stem cup of complex origins. While related stylistically and iconographically to Chinese works attributed to the Tang dynasty (617–906), this goblet is clearly also indebted to the cultures of Tibet and Central Asia, and as such has been attributed to the region of Xinjiang, modern China's most northwestern province, and dated to the late seventh to eighth century, when Tibet dominated much of northern Central Asia. Continue
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Defining Authenticity
The articles presented in this issue of met objectives illustrate the role of the Museum's conservation departments in the process of evaluating proposed acquisitions, and so it seems appropriate here to consider the nature of authenticity, as this concept carries such powerful effect within the art world. Authenticity has always been an issue of high profile, not only for museums and private collections, but also for the public at large. Continue
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Reconsidering a Romanesque Reliquary Cross
A major aim of the Museum's acquisition policy is the procurement of objects of the highest artistic merit, while building strength and continuity in the collections. A late twelfth-century, double-armed reliquary cross believed to be from Limoges, acquired by the Museum earlier this year, satisfies all of these criteria. Continue
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The Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation at The Cloisters
After four years of planning and construction, the Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation at The Cloisters opened officially on May 6, 2002. This new facility was made possible by the continued generous support of the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, and provides, for the first time, an on-site, modern laboratory specifically designed for the examination and treatment of objects. Continue
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The Visual Examination of a Roman Portrait Head
At The Metropolitan Museum of Art a long-term project is currently underway for the renovation of the Greek and Roman Galleries. The resulting increase in gallery space will include a large courtyard, currently used as a public restaurant, to house classical sculpture. Continue
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A Recumbent Lion of the Old Kingdom
Recently the Museum's Department of Egyptian Art had the rare opportunity to acquire a pink granite statue of monumental proportions: a recumbent lion excavated by Edouard Naville in 1891 at Herakleopolis Magna, some seventy miles south of Cairo. The work was carried out under the auspices of the Egyptian Exploration Fund, and in recognition of its financial support of the Fund's undertakings, the lion came into the collection of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery in Greenock, Scotland. Continue
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