Monday, September 29, 2008

Art & Empire: Assyrian Treasures at MFA, Boston

Suite 101 (Stan Parchin)

With photographs.

"Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston features 250 objects from ancient Assyrian palaces and temples.

On view in the building's Gund Gallery from September 21, 2008 to January 4, 2009, this ticketed exhibition of ancient Near Eastern works from the 9th to 7th Centuries B.C. displays carved ivories, royal and religious statuary, massive relief and small-scale sculptures, clay tablets inscribed in wedge-shaped cuneiform writing, cylinder seals, furniture fittings, precious jewelry and metal vessels from the palaces of Nimrud and Nineveh.

Art and Empire... describes the complex society, religion and court culture of the ancient Neo-Assyrian Empire. Spanning the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, Assyria at its height spanned all of modern-day Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as well as large parts of Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Iran. The installation's magnificent Mesopotamian masterpieces were previously displayed to worldwide acclaim at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995), Dallas' Kimbell Art Museum (1995-96) and Spain's Museo Arqueologico Provincial de Alicante (2007) before their unprecedented stateside return, this time to Boston.


See the above page for the full story.

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