Displaying items by tag: assyrian stone reliefs

The British Museum’s proposed loans for Abu Dhabi could be worth up to £1bn. The most valuable item earmarked is an Assyrian relief from Nimrud, the Banquet Scene (645–635BC), which was revalued last year at £100m. No longer on display since it was placed on a reserve list, the world’s finest Assyrian relief is now languishing in the London institution’s store, awaiting its likely loan in 2017 for a five-year stay in the Gulf.

Five other antiquities on the list earmarked for Abu Dhabi are valued at more than £250m.

The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth received an anonymous $10 million donation. The gift, which will be put towards building the centerpiece of the two-year renovation and expansion project:  a new Museum Learning Center.

The renovation project, helmed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects—designers of the American Folk Art Museum building and the new Barnes Foundation—is part of Dartmouth’s aim of beefing up its campus arts district. The expansion will increase the museum’s current 39,000-square-foot space by 15,000 square feet, giving it more room to show off the museum’s collection, which touts some 65,000 objects including paintings by Perugino, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Rockwell Kent, along with a collection of Assyrian stone reliefs. The expansion will also add three classrooms for the use of digital technology.