Displaying items by tag: greek art

It has been obvious for many years that few areas of the Museum of Fine Arts’s permanent collection were more poorly presented to the public than its stupendous Greek and Roman holdings. The relevant galleries, on the eastern side of the building, had almost no climate control, which meant that in summer they were baking. This made for uncomfortable viewing, but it was also, of course, totally inappropriate for the fragile objects on view. The glass cases were often dusty. Wall labels were typed out on cards.

Now, three contiguous galleries devoted to aspects of Ancient Greece have been opened to the public, and the difference they make is enormous.

The touring exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum is currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through October 6, 2013. Presenting 120 objects from the British Museum’s renowned collection of Greek and Roman art, each work explores the human form and humanity as sources of artistic inspiration. The show spans three millennia of Greek civilization and includes marble and bronze sculptures, painted pottery, terracotta, and jewelry.

The Body Beautiful is divided into 10 thematic sections that illustrate the various ways the Greeks interpreted the human body including Cycladic figures and realistic Roman genre sculptures. Highlights from the exhibition include the Diskobolos (discus thrower) sculpture from the second century A.D., which is on view for the first time in the United States, and a model of Ancient Olympia as it would have appeared around 100 B.C. A video installation will be shown alongside the model providing glimpses of the original Olympic sites and artworks depicting the ancient athletic event.

Maxwell L. Anderson, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, “We will present a visually engaging and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition as seen by the ancient Greeks, and, equally, of the origins of our construct of beauty today.”