January 2009

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The past 15 months have seen the reopening of the two most important Classical collections in North America. First came that of the J. Paul Getty Museum in its splendidly refurbished villa overlooking the Pacific at Malibu. Last month, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York completed the ambitious reconstruction of its Classical galleries, presenting to the public its even more extensive holdings in Greek and Roman art, now elegantly installed in spaces that, like the Getty, evoke the complicated interactions of American wealth and culture and Greek and Roman civilisation.

The Metropolitan’s Classical collection is not only the most extensive in America, it is also historically the most interesting.(1) The museum’s roots lay partly in the desire of the post Civil War American elite to emulate the collecting habits of their European counterparts and partly in a mission like that of the Victoria and Albert Museum, to use art to elevate public taste and improve public culture in the rapidly expanding and changing city. To meet the latter goal, the Metropolitan invested early and extensively in plaster casts that were prominently displayed in the galleries during the early years.(2) The museum’s collecting mission got off to a rather bizarre start in the 1870s, when it acquired much of the Cypriot art collection of Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Italian expatriate, Civil War officer and American consul in Cyprus (Fig. 2).(3) At a time when the Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton was promoting the virtues of a pure Hellenic classicism, art historians looked askance at the complex, cross-cultural world of Cypriot art.(4) However, this was the only sizeable collection of ancient Mediterranean art available and the Metropolitan’s trustees seized the opportunity. They also appointed Cesnola as the museum’s first director, in 1879.

The Cesnola collection has always been a barometer of definitions of approved Classicism at the Metropolitan and as such it has gone from centrality to marginality. Early images show the exotic part Greek, part Near-Eastern-looking statues dominating the galleries (Fig. 4). Then the collection largely disappeared. Now it has a tasteful, well-designed area, but in the Near Eastern galleries, well segregated from the core Classical collection.(5)

The Met entered the mainstream Classical collecting world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its reference point was no longer an obscure Mediterranean island, but Rome. Rome was at that time the centre of the Mediterranean antiquities trade, its market fed by the breakup of ancient Italian collections, by new pieces unearthed from the soil of a rapidly changing Rome and Italy, and by objects clandestinely exported from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Leading agents were the Anglo-American aesthetes Edward Perry Warren and John Marshall and the ambitious young art historian Gisela Richter (Fig. 3).(6) Many of the Met’s most famous objects, such as the archaic Greek kouros and the Boscoreale Roman wall paintings, were acquired during those years. Also added to the collection were some spectacular fakes, such as the massive Etruscan terracotta warriors that once dominated the Classical galleries (see Fig. 5) but have now have suffered a regrettable damnatio memoriae.(7)

During these same decades the museum moved into a new building worthy of the expanding collection and New York’s economic affluence and self-conscious cultural pride. Calvert Vaux’s original building was Venetian gothic in style but the early extensions, notably those by Richard Morris Hunt and McKim Mead and White, were in an eclectic imperial-classical idiom. As with so many banks and railway stations of the era, this style reflected the new plutocracy’s identification with the Roman Empire, and it was in this expanded structure that the Classical collections opened in 1917. Central to their display was a peristyle or atrium where beautiful antiquities could be displayed much as they might have been in the villa of a great Roman collector (Fig. 5). Much later, the Getty would outdo this by reproducing the whole ancient Villa of the Papyri, but the original Met design represented a more complex dialogue between elite values in the past and present.

As the collections expanded, the Met’s mission changed. The ‘Victoria and Albert’ goal of elevating taste became less important. The casts disappeared, and most public education on antiquity was relegated to ‘daily life’ exhibitions and the activities of the education department. However, a scholarly mission did endure, as was witnessed by the content-rich catalogues written by Gisela Richter, who, after 19 years in the department, was appointed the museum’s Curator of Greek and Roman art in 1925.(8)

The decades immediately after World War II were not happy ones for the Met’s Classical collections and especially for their display. Although that was an era of revival of interest in the Classics, and the ‘Golden Age’ of American Classical Archaeology, the Greek and Roman exhibits lost space and prestige. A major blow came when in 1949-50 the peristyle-atrium was turned into a restaurant. As an aspiring student of archaeology I wandered the corridors of the Met during those years. It was the Egyptian rather than the increasingly shabby and restricted Classical galleries that riveted my attention. Increasingly Greek vases seemed all that mattered to the curators.

The Attic vase mania culminated in 1972 with the acquisition of the famous – or infamous – ‘million dollar pot’, the beautiful Attic crater signed by Euphronios.(9) This expensive purchase symbolised the start of a dynamic new era in the Met’s history. The growing wealth of New York’s old and new cultural elite was once again tapped to enhance collections and improve facilities. Objects were given and purchases flowed into the already crowded Classical galleries and storerooms. The last quarter of the 20th century saw an expansion of the Classical holdings equivalent to the glory days of Marshall and Richter. A rough estimate based on acquisition dates in the new catalogue reveals 65 pieces (mainly Cesnola purchases) were acquired in 1870-1914; 126 in 1900-1919; 84 in 1920-39; a paltry 44 in 1950-69; and 64 between 1970 and 2006.

However, this was also a time when concern was growing in the professional community about the connection between unrestrained trading and collecting of artifacts and the destruction of archaeological heritage throughout the world.(10) Not only the Euphronios vase but other new material in the expanding Met collection assumed a central role in the international debate about ‘who owned the past’. The debate remains very heated, with the Met assuming both conciliatory and truculent positions. Most of the new pieces in the Classical collection came with very little verifiable history. Most are in excellent condition, an indication to the experienced archaeologist that they were found in burial contexts. If even the stated presumed provenances are correct, most came from countries that have had strict, long-standing laws on the exportation of antiquities.

The influx of this material forced the museum to think once again about the Classical galleries. Much more space was needed and that could best be obtained by repossessing the areas around the atrium-peristyle that had been appropriated for food services and administrative offices. The Classical collections could once again assume the centrality in the museum’s display that the original architects and planners had wished. Not only would this require total reinstallation, but in some areas considerable structural reworking. In one of the most successful of these major changes, the peristyle court has not only been restored, but its height doubled with a second tier of attached columns framing blind windows. The arched glass roof admits abundant light, providing a bright display area for select pieces of Hellenistic and Roman sculpture (Fig. 6).

The first two sections of the renovated galleries, which concentrated on prehistoric and Classical art, opened in 1996 and 1999.(11) The relocated galleries for the Cypriot collection opened in 2000. The fourth, and final, phase, which was inagurated last month, includes the Hellenistic, Roman and Etruscan collections, with some Italic art. The vision of the original architects and designers has been been splendidly fulfilled. From the Met’s great entrance rotunda, the visitor’s eye follows the line of the central display hall, lined with classical masterpieces, to the massive column capital from Sardis (Fig. 1), the product of one of America’s earliest involvements in Mediterranean archaeology. Beyond one glimpses the peristyle and its select works of sculpture. The effect is like entering the house of a grandee of the late Roman republic and from the vestibule catching a distant vision of his art treasures displayed in the family peristyle.

I must admit to having always been underwhelmed by the prehistoric and Classical rooms. The Greek prehistoric collection is heavily concentrated on the small marble figurines from the Cyclades, whose geometric forms appeal to the contemporary collector, but whose lack of archaeological context makes it difficult to construct a picture of their cultural world.(12) The sculpture collection has some splendid pieces, but the Met came too late into the business to acquire an equivalent of the Aegina marbles in Munich or the Pergamene sculptures in Berlin.(13) Attic vases there are in abundance, but they are an acquired taste, which most visitors – including myself – do not possess. On my recent visit, that section of the gallery was largely deserted.

The ideology of presentation in both display and labelling in those galleries is conservative and traditional, the celebratory view of Attic Greece that I learned as an undergraduate: there is even the expected quote from Thucydides on the glories of Athens. Recent scholarship on religion, gender, economics and popular culture has transformed our understanding of the ancient Greek world; it would have been nice to have more of that reflected in the Greek galleries.

The design of the new galleries, which focus on the Classical world between Alexander the Great and the end of the Roman Empire, posed different challenges that have been impressively met. The cultural experiences of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds were much more complicated and diverse than those of the Classical era. Whereas the Greek galleries are overwhelmingly focused on Attica in the 6th to 4th centuries BC, the new displays convey a good sense of the multiple cultural experiences that after the conquests of Alexander and Rome extended from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. The elites not only sponsored art, they also collected it, with the result that the copies of Classical sculptures that dominate our museum collections are as relevant for an understanding of Roman culture and taste as of Athenian. The economies during those centuries became richer and more diverse, producing objects for the ordinary person that made their way into the archaeological record. A veritable supermarket of religions served every spiritual need.

The material richness of this Hellenistic and Roman experience is well represented in the Met’s collection. Again, it reflects the history of the collections. Late Grand Tour Americans purchased terracottas, ceramics, lamps and pieces of tombstones and sarcophagi, which they donated to the Met. Others formed more systematic collections of coins and gems that also came to the museum. The result was a material abundance and diversity that the curators have embraced with enthusiasm and sensitivity. Many of the themes pursued are high cultural: the Metropolitan Museum and the profession of Classical archaeology are not at their core populist institutions. Considerable attention is paid to the key role played by Hellenistic artists in shaping Roman culture, a point well made by including some of the museum’s Roman wall paintings in the gallery of Hellenistic art. The rich holdings of Hellenistic and Roman portraiture are presented not only as examples of brilliant artistic creativity, but also as exercises in cultural identity.

Religion and even economics have their place in the exhibitions. There is, for example, a small display on trade, complete with transport amphorae. The political, the artistic and the economic are combined also in the form of Hellenistic and Roman coins. Here there is a certain irony, for the Met sold much of its numismatic holdings to help pay for the Euphronios vase. Fortunately, loan arrangements with the American Numismatic Society have allowed coins once again to feature, so this important aspect of ancient art and culture is not neglected.

These several explorations of Hellenistic and Roman art and culture enfold in interconnected galleries that open off the main atrium. It is a pleasure to see old favourites, such as the Roman wall paintings from Boscotrecase and Boscoreale (Figs. 8 and 9), cleaned and displayed in new settings that capture well their original ambience.(14)However, there is a disturbing quantity of new material, beautiful but without provenance, which is ironic in a display that tries hard to imbed art in culture and society. How we understand a work differs if it comes from a tomb near Rome, a villa near Naples, or a shrine in Turkey. Without that information many objects float with limited meaning in an art-historical never-never land.

The exhibits continue onto a series of second-floor galleries. Etruscan art now has a room of its own, with its centrepiece the meticulously reconstructed and restored chariot that was found at Monteleone in Tuscany in 1902 (Fig. 10). The display of Etruscan art is followed by a large study gallery. The Classical curators have followed the precedent of their colleagues in the Egyptian department, largely emptied their storerooms, and placed most of the objects on display in full, but well ordered, cases. Labels are minimal, but each case is keyed into a series of computerised display panels. A touch to the screen brings up an image of the object and text that provides full background information. The scholar, the student, and the archaeologically obsessive can surf to their hearts’ content.

The opening of the new galleries has provided the occasion for the publication of a new pictorial catalogue.(15) It is a handsome book with fine photographs of the collection’s highlights. However, I found it less satisfying than the galleries themselves. Museum display labelling must be controlled in length and complexity, and a catalogue provides the opportunity to explore in greater depth the many complicated themes raised by the new displays. That was one of the great virtues of the catalogues produced by Gisela Richter in the period between the wars. The new catalogue has minimal text and is more abstractly aesthetic than the display itself. It is also bulky and expensive. The Met would be wise to emulate the newly opened archaeological museums in Rome and produce serious, but accessible, portable guides to the collections.

One will always wish for more. For example, there is little about the history of the collections. A small display is planned in a marginal space on the second floor. More centrality is needed. The history of collecting is a dynamic field right now, and European museums have made it central to their displays. Not only would that history say much about what we see – and don’t see – in the Met’s galleries, but it would provide very important chapters in the story of Classical archaeology in America. Fakes and forgeries played an important role in the development of the museum’s collections. Their stories educate and fascinate visitors. The Met tends to bury its mistakes, as is witnessed by the invisibility of the Etruscan warriors. Better to be like the Getty with its famous (or notorious) kouros and highlight the debates that surround the dubious and the fake.(16)

More could be done to place Greece and Rome in the larger context of the development of civilisation in the Mediterranean. The marginal location of the Cypriot art represents a lost opportunity. That material reminds us that Greek civilisation did not arise fully born out of the head of an Olympian deity but was spurred by interaction with old and wise civilisations to the south and east. The Greek historian Herodotus realised that in the 5th century BC and we can still benefit from his openness.

The importance of the Classical tradition is currently of great interest to both the scholar and the perceptive amateur. The Met could use its early Christian and medieval collections to explore the transformations of the Classical. Appropriately, the reopening of the Classical galleries coincided with the inauguration of new galleries devoted to the influence of the Classical on American art. Hermetically sealed curatorial departments are a major problem in all large museums. The Met can follow the lead of our most imaginative cultural scholars and break down barriers and explore interconnections.

Finally, one can hope that the Met will find courage and space to provide a venue for the display of divergent positions on issues of cultural patrimony. The museum has clearly articulated positions with which some agree and others – including myself – do not. It is a public institution self-confident enough to host within its walls genuine debates that will educate and enlighten those who visit and support it.

The opening of the last of the Greek and Roman galleries has once again made the Met the premier stopping place in North America for students of Classical art.(17) Its curators have displayed well an impressive number of beautiful objects, but have also in the newest galleries used the depth of their collections to explore themes outside the pure realm of high art that are of increasing interest to students of Classical archaeology and to educated visitors. The plaster casts are gone, but an imaginative balance has been attained between the museum as a ‘temple of beauty’ and the ideals of the founders of the Victoria and Albert Museum, that a museum should be an institution that elevates taste and educates the public.

Stephen L. Dyson is Park Professor of Classics at the University at Buffalo, New York. His most recent book is In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts: A History of Classical Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2006).

For information about visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, telephone +1 212 535 7710, or visit www.metmuseum.org

Art of the Classical World in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome by Carlos A. Picón, Joan R. Mertens, Elizabeth J. Milleker, Christopher S. Lightfoot and Seàn Hemingway, with contributions from Richard De Puma, is published by the museum and distributed by Yale University Press, $75.

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