April 16, 2007
Met opens spectacular Greek & Roman Galleries
The Metropolitan Museum of Art this week opens its new Greek & Roman Galleries, a 15-year project that pulls 5,300 long-hidden objects out of storage to display in a series of grand rooms drenched with natural light from skylights and arched windows that appear to pull Central Park and Fifth Avenue into the museum itself.
 Entering the new space past a massive Greek Ionic column taken from the temple of Artemis at Sardis in Turkey, visitors are greeted with an immense amount of space, modeled on grand Roman buildings, such as the imperial baths. With a large skylight above the two-story room, statues, sarcophagi a fountain are arranged on the marble floor meant to evoke the Pantheon in Rome. (The surrounding black and white mosaic floor was installed in 1920 by De Paoli and Company, lasting through the room's earlier use as the museum's cafeteria.)
The galleries showcase the museum's vast collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian and Roman art, much of it "unseen in New York for generations," according to Met officials.
Among the gems are an entire bronze Etruscan chariot from the 6th century BC; fresco panels from the bedroom of Boscoreale that are among the most complete to survive from antiquity; the intricately carved marble Badminton Sarcophagus showing Dionysus seated on a panther; two statues of Hercules, young and old, facing each other from across the central gallery, and carvings of the purplish-red imperial stone porphry.
 Upstairs, facing Fifth Avenue, you'll find a vast room called the "study collection," described on the audio guide as more of everything. There are touch-screens along the wall that allow viewer to tap the screen and get basic information about any item in any case.
The galleries open to the public starting Friday. There is no extra charge to see the new sections; it's included with the regular (suggested) $20 admission.
The museum has also published a new book to document the galleries. Called "Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," the hefty edition is priced at $65.
Free podcasts are inlcuded on the museum's website.
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April 16, 2007 10:35 PM in Architecture, Museums, Sightsology, Upper East Side
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