NEWLY RENOVATED, DRAMATIC DAYLIT ROOM FEATURES WORKS FROM THE PALACE OF ASHURNASIRPAL II,
October 19, 1999
Galleries for Ancient Near Eastern Art:
Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery and Douglas Dillon Galleries
October 19 marks the culmination of an 18-month-long renovation and reinstallation project at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as nearly 1,500 works from the permanent collection of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art return to public view. The newly reorganized galleries feature the monumental sculpture, distinctive metalwork, delicately carved ivories and seals, exquisite jewelry, and other works of art made in the ancient Near East over nearly nine millennia. A highlight is the dramatic renovation of the Assyrian relief gallery, evocative of an audience hall in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II.
Support for the reinstallation of the Galleries for Ancient Near Eastern Art has been provided by The Hagop Kevorkian Fund.
Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented: "With the reopening of the Galleries for Ancient Near Eastern Art, some of the earliest objects to enter the Museum's collections — including a number of rare and beautiful works of art created at the very beginning of human civilization — will once again be on view.
"The Museum's curators and designers have worked together skillfully — creating
new groupings of both familiar and long-unseen works and introducing daylight into these magnificent rooms for the first time — to present these exceptional objects in a dazzling new setting."
The ancient Near East — a region that extends in modern times from Turkey to India, and from Russia and the Central Asian republics to Yemen — encompasses various lands of antiquity, including ancient Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, Elam, Canaan, and Phoenicia. The works of art in the Metropolitan's collection of ancient Near Eastern art date from 8000 B.C. to A.D. 651, a timespan that begins with the earliest farming and herding villages and extends through the invention of writing and the first cities and kings around 3000 B.C. until the Arab conquest and the spread of Islam in the seventh century A.D.
The redesigned galleries are arranged chronologically and by geographical region. Throughout, the works are set in contexts that illuminate their significance in antiquity as well as their connections to art of neighboring cultures. A new extension of the collection is the inclusion of works from western Central Asia made in the mid- to late first millennium A.D. The themes of technology, magic, and deities are also highlighted in the exhibition space devoted to Phoenician, Palmyrene, and southwestern Arabian works of art of the first millennia B.C. and A.D.
The focus of new construction has been in the central part of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery for Assyrian Art, which recreates an audience hall in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud. The monumental stone reliefs in this space have been opened to daylight from above and the setting reconstructed with ceiling beams set at the approximate height of the palace rooms of the ninth century B.C. Objects in an adjacent gallery illustrate the art of the Assyrian Empire and its neighbors, with emphasis on works in precious materials that were part of the furnishings of the Assyrian court.
Among the strengths of the collection are objects excavated by Museum-sponsored projects at Nippur, Nimrud, and Ctesiphon in Iraq and at Hasanlu, Yarim Tepe,
and Qasr-i Abu Nasr in Iran; superb ivories from Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia;
silver and gold objects from Iran; and a number of long-term loans from foreign countries
and institutions, as well as from American museums.
Galleries for Assyrian Art
Visitors who enter the Galleries of Ancient Near Eastern Art from the southwest corner of the Great Hall Balcony will find themselves looking at the luxury arts of Assyria and neighboring regions in the first of three rooms that constitute the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery for Assyrian Art. All of the objects in this first space date from the ninth to the seventh century B.C., the period of the Assyrian Empire, and were made in distinct styles by different cultures.
The adjacent Assyrian relief gallery reconstructs an audience hall in the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, the ancient city of Kalhu, near present-day Mosul in northern Iraq. The first of a succession of powerful Assyrian kings of the ninth through seventh century B.C., Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883-859 B.C.) led his army as far as the Mediterranean coast, and his governors controlled an area extending from the east bank of the Tigris River to the Euphrates River. His annual military campaigns brought immense wealth back to the Assyrian heartland, and Ashurnasirpal II constructed an enormous palace, whose major doorways were guarded by lamassi — protective human-headed lions and bulls — and whose walls were lined with carved stone reliefs depicting scenes of warfare and ritual. The king's celebration of the construction of his new capital in 879 B.C. was attended by 69,574 people and is described in an inscription: " . . . the happy people of all the lands together with the people of Kalhu for ten days I feasted, wined, bathed, and honored them and sent them back to their homes in peace and joy."
The Metropolitan Museum reliefs depict scenes of ritual. Inside the Assyrian relief gallery are carved alabaster relief panels depicting the king and his attendants, as well as protective winged mythological beings. Embroidery patterns were engraved on the
garments of many of these figures. Relief details originally were painted in various colors,
but very little of the paint has survived.
The Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II incorporated several audience halls in which the king or high officials dealt with the affairs of state. The Metropolitan Museum's Assyrian relief gallery recreates some features of these audience halls, including the ceiling beams, arched doorway, size of the floor tiles, and proportions of the room itself.
The third part of the Sackler gallery is devoted to the origins of the civilization that was to flourish in such spectacular fashion under the Assyrian kings. In this area, the focus is on the art of prehistoric and early historic periods from the eighth to the fourth millennium B.C. Highlights include spectacular Neolithic and Chalcolithic objects on long-term loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority.
"A Walk through Time"
Continuing up the stairs along the east side, the next gallery in chronological sequence presents art of the third millennium B.C. from Mesopotamia, Iran, the Indus Valley, western Central Asia, and Anatolia. One case in this gallery focuses on an excavated assemblage of sacred and functional objects from a Sumerian temple, the temple of the goddess Inanna at Nippur. Another presents jewelry and precious vessels of the mid-third millennium B.C., including headdresses and necklaces from the Royal Cemetery at Ur. A loan of art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, excavated at Chanhu Daro, allows a fuller presentation of the civilization of the Indus Valley than previously possible.
In the middle gallery on the east side, dedicated to the second and early first millennia B.C., is a prominent display of large glazed brick lions from the city of Babylon. Other exceptional pieces include pre-Hittite ivory carvings (18th century B.C.) and Hittite silver vessels (15th-13th century B.C.) made in Anatolia. Loans of additional Anatolian objects from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, as well as Babylonian objects from the Wilberforce Eames Collection of the New York Public Library and the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, supplement the Metropolitan's collection in this gallery.
The southernmost gallery in the east sequence presents art of the first millennium B.C. and first millennium A.D., focusing on the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian dynasties of Iran. In addition to the Museum's superb collection of silver and gold objects from the sixth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D., a highlight of this gallery is a long-term loan from the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences, Tajikistan, and other works of ceramic, silver, and textiles made in western Central Asia.
Areas of wooden flooring in the center of galleries along the eastern corridor present highlights of the collection, but will also be used in the future for small, rotating exhibitions.
Trade Routes, Texts, and Technology
On the west side of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery of Assyrian Art and up the stairs is a final gallery containing Phoenician works from the eastern and western Mediterranean world, as well as art from along the incense trade routes linking ancient Israel and Syria with the southwestern Arabian peninsula. Other objects illustrate topics such as techniques of manufacture, intercultural styles, the Bible and the ancient Near East, deities, and scripts. Loans of art from Dura-Europos (Yale University Art Gallery), Bubastis (Department of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan Museum), and Carmona, Spain (The Hispanic Society of America), are new additions that significantly enhance the display.
Educational Programs
A variety of educational programs will be offered, including gallery talks, lectures, a poetry reading, and films for general visitors, as well as classes for students, teachers, and families. There will also be a feature on the Museum's Web site (www.metmuseum.org) focusing on works excavated from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II.
An Audio Guide is also available, providing ten messages to orient visitors to the newly reinstalled galleries.
The Key to the Met Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg News.
The reinstallation is organized by Prudence O. Harper, Curator in Charge, and Joan Aruz, Associate Curator; and complementary maps and texts, labels, and wall panels were compiled by Geoff Emberling, Assistant Curator, all members of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. Exhibition design is by Jeffrey L. Daly, Chief Designer, and Dennis Kois, Design Assistant of the Museum's Design Department.
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October 18, 1999
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