Exhibitions: Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity

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Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity

Dates: On view since April 12, 2003
Location: On view in Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor
Description: Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity (long-term installation). [04/12/2003 - --/--/2---]. Installation view.
Citation: Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Egyptian, Classical & Ancient Middle Eastern Art. (ECA_E_2003_Egypt)
Source: color slide 1 x 1.5 in. (3 x 4 cm)
Related Links: Main Exhibition Page

Press Releases

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September 2002: More than six hundred objects from the world-renowned ancient Egyptian holdings of the Brooklyn Museum of Art will be added to the extraordinary selection now on view. The new material, three-quarters of which has not been on public view for at least a decade, will be presented in newly refurbished gallery space that will open to the public on April 12, 2003. The new presentation will begin with a thematic installation entitled “Permanence and Change,” encompassing all of ancient Egyptian history on view in the central gallery. It will be followed by a chronological presentation ranging from the Predynastic Period through the 18th Dynasty reign of Amunhotep III.

Egyptologist James F. Romano, Ph.D., is project director of the reinstallation that has been more than a decade in planning, during the course of which he has reviewed over 4,000 Egyptian objects in the Museum’s galleries and storerooms. Other members of the team are Richard A. Fazzini, Chair, Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, along with Curators Edna R. Russmann, Ph.D., Edward Bleiberg, Ph.D., and Research Associate Madeleine C. Cody. Each object in the new presentation has been evaluated by the BMA’s conservation laboratory and stabilized and repaired where necessary.

The reinstallation is supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The new presentation complements the more than 500 ancient Egyptian treasures that were installed in 1993 when the renovated galleries in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing opened. That installation begins with a chronological presentation of material dating from the Amarna Period and the reign of Amunhotep IV—later known as Akhenaten,—and his wife Nefertiti through the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. The final galleries of the 1993 installation contain a thematic presentation entitled “Temples, Tombs, and the Egyptian Universe,” exploring the connection between ancient Egyptian religious beliefs and their art.

The first thematic section in the new installation is organized around four topics: “Early Life along the Nile,” “Life & Belief,” “Art & Communication,” and “Materials & Technology.” Questions such as how the form and style of pottery changed over the course of 200 years, how objects left in tombs provide clues about how the Egyptians lived, and how most works of Egyptian sculpture were really three-dimensional hieroglyphs will be addressed. In addition, the gallery display will explore how sculptural form, style, and iconography evolved from 2650 B.C. to the first century A.D. This gallery also contains the doors that originally served as the Museum’s main entrance before the removal of the front staircase in 1934. The doors, which lead out on to a small balcony, will afford visitors to the Egyptian reinstallation a superb view of the new front entrance and plaza area when it is completed.

The chronological presentation will begin with the Predynastic Period and conclude with the 18th dynasty reign of Amunhotep III. The Predynastic Period, dating from 4400 to 3000 B.C., comprised the Badarian Period, and the Naqada I, II, and III Periods. This era was characterized by developments in writing and large-scale architecture, contacts with Mespotamia and other Near Eastern lands, and with Nubia. During this time there was increased urbanization and centralization of political authority as distinct cultures were eventually unified from 3000 to 2675 B.C. during the First and Second Dynasties. Among the objects on view in this gallery will be a flint knife with an elaborately carved ivory handle depicting 227 animals of 19 species, an abstract terracotta female figure with outflung arms, and an array of vessels, among them a late Naqada vase, adorned with a painted procession of mammals, created between 3400–3300 B.C.

Three Old Kingdom galleries, encompassing Dynasties 3 through 6 from about 2675 through 2170 B.C., reflect the transition to a more classic expression through royal pyramid tombs and funerary temples with statuary and reliefs, as well as major tombs of powerful private individuals. Among the Old Kingdom material on view is a limestone statue of a family group depicting a man, his diminutive wife, and their small son. It was the first major work of Egyptian art ever exhibited in America. Other notable objects in this section include three elaborately painted wooden tomb statues depicting a man at various stages of his life and an exquisite alabaster statue of King Pepy II, who became king while a small child, seated on the lap of his mother Queen Ankhnes-meryre II. Among the Middle Kingdom material, covering the first half of Dynasty 11, Dynasty 12, and part of Dynasty 13 (from about 2008 to 1630 B.C.), will be sections devoted to statues, stelae, and funerary items. Included will be the colossal head of a queen or princess, considered by experts to be one of the finest such surviving sculptures from this major epoch of Egyptian history. It was found at the Emperor Hadrian’s Roman villa and is believed to have been part of his collection of ancient Egyptian art. This section features a quartzite statue of an official thought to have been given to Josephine by Napoleon as a souvenir of his unsuccessful military campaign in Egypt. Also included are a remarkably preserved black granite statue of Senwosret III, one of the most powerful kings of the Twelfth Dynasty; delightful small faience objects including a bristling hedgehog, and a charming sleeping dog; and a number of objects left by pious pilgrims to Abydos, cult center of the god Osiris.

The Second Intermediate Period installation continues the chronology from the second half of Dynasty 13 through Dynasty 17, covering circa 1630–1539 B.C. Here will be displayed material from the reigns of the six Asian Hyksos kings including a stylized terracotta female fertility figure, a copper statue of a royal princess nursing a child, and a fragment of a relief from an island near Aswan that may have been from a massive altar.

The section devoted to the early New Kingdom, dating from around 1539 to 1353 B.C. will contain several masterpieces from the Museum’s pre-eminent holdings of 18th-dynasty material. Considered by scholars to be the most important period in Egyptian history, it began with the reign of the King Ahmose who succeeded in defeating the Hyksos and reuniting Egypt. On view will be an extraordinary gilded ebony statue of Amunhotep III, whose reign was distinguished by the opulence and grandeur of the objects and buildings that it produced; a jar painted with a scene of cattle and women; and a kneeling statue of the official Senenmut, chief advisor to the legendary female pharaoh Hatshepsut.

The new installation will include extensive wall labels, as well as computer terminals that will provide in-depth information about select objects in the presentation. One gallery will be devoted to rotating exhibitions, the first of which will be an exhibition of important material from the Museum’s Wilbour Library of Egyptology including books created for collectors as well as those published for a mass audience. The information, lithographs, engravings, and photographs in these books created the excitement about Egypt that led to excavations by both professionals and amateurs in the 19th century. There will also be a section here devoted to Charles Edwin Wilbour, from whom the BMA received much of the material in its collection. This presentation has been organized by Chief Librarian Deirdre Lawrence, with Wilbour librarians Jim Vishkochil and Mary Gow, along with Egyptologist Edward Bleiberg.

The galleries containing the ancient Egyptian material span the entire length of the front façade of the building, the equivalent of two average city blocks. The principal entrance will be through the newly reinstalled Hagop Kevorkian Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art that contains the Museum’s collection of twelve of the ancient Assyrian reliefs (circa 883–859 B.C.) from the Northwest Palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II in Nimrud (modern Iraq). This gallery has been equipped with motorized lifts that make them completely wheelchair accessible for the first time in the history of the building.

The new presentation, designed by Simon Adlam, will be dramatically different than the 1993 installation. The thematic gallery will feature a large-scale rendering of an ancient Egyptian map of the heavens mounted on the ceiling, based on a creation by an artist in Napoleon’s retinue and reproduced in a volume in the Wilbour Library. Other features of the new installation will be the introduction of color, including red mica, metallic gold, and deep blue, a colonnade suggesting heaven and earth, and dramatic lighting. Specially designed architectural casework will maintain a constant 50% humidity.

About the Collection
The Brooklyn Museum of Art began collecting ancient Egyptian material in the beginning of the twentieth century. Two early sources of objects were a Brooklyn Museum archaeological expedition in 1906–8 that came about through a relationship with Britain’s Egypt Exploration Fund, and acquisitions from the holdings of private collector Armand de Potter. In 1916, 1935, and 1947, the collection of pioneer American Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833–1896) was given in stages to the BMA. The gifts of Wilbour’s heirs included the contents of his professional library and, in 1931, an endowment in his memory that has funded the establishment of both the Wilbour Library of Egyptology and a curatorial department for ancient Egyptian Art. In 1948 the Museum purchased the Egyptian collection of The New-York Historical Society, which included more than 2,000 objects. Gifts and purchases continue to add significant objects to the collection.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1995 - 2003. 2002, 055-58. View Original 1 . View Original 2 . View Original 3 . View Original 4
... more

March 2003: The ancient Egyptians didn’t have touch-screen computers loaded with Flash MX, XHTML and QuickTime programs when they built the Sphinx and the pyramids, created beautiful art, and established a great civilization. But visitors to the Brooklyn Museum of Art will have that technology to help guide them through Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, the newly expanded exhibition of ancient Egyptian art on long-term view beginning April 12, 2003.

The exhibition will include four wheelchair-accessible, interactive kiosks with touch screens that will extend visitor’s experience beyond the physical exhibition space and art objects and allow visitors to learn and virtually experience the world of ancient Egypt through compelling interactive activities. A new BMA Web site will eventually have all of the resources included in the kiosks.

The kiosks and Web site were designed by the Museum’s Education Division, its Department of Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, and Swim Design Consultants, Inc., of Silver Spring, Maryland, a visual communications firm specializing in Web sites and interactive projects for museums and cultural institutions.

Three of the kiosks will focus on a number of nearby objects, using technology to provide close visual analysis. The first kiosk will concentrate on “Elements of Style.” Visitors will be able to manipulate a 3-D animated man to compare him with the portrayal of a man on an Egyptian relief nearby. This will allow users to see how and why the ancient Egyptians combined frontal and profile views in a style that is recognizable and distinct. This kiosk will also use morphing technology to illustrate how the ancient Egyptians used different artistic methods in different periods of their history. “Elements of Style” will take users into the virtual tomb of Akhty-hotep, the subject of a relief in the BMA’s collection, and show objects that were once situated adjacent to this relief but are now housed in other museums around the world.

“Signs of Afterlife,” the second kiosk, focuses on a funerary stela, or commemorative tablet, with images and hieroglyphs of the many people and items the deceased will require in the afterlife. Visitors will learn about the close relationship between art and writing and the possible motivations for taking such things as dogs and ointment jars into the afterlife. They will also be able to interactively translate an inscription and follow a BMA curator’s research process about one element on the stela that might have been recarved in ancient times.

“Striking Poses,” the third kiosk, invites users to learn about the main poses of Egyptian statues by selecting from twelve figures for comparison. Users will have access to in-depth information about each object and will be able to scale the figures in order to better understand their relative sizes. This kiosk will also include a close analysis of shawabtis, the small figures that were placed in tombs to perform agricultural and other tasks for the deceased.

In addition, visitors will take a virtual “behind-the-scenes” tour of the Museum’s conservation department to see how one standing statue was prepared for the exhibition.

The fourth kiosk will provide supplementary reference materials, including a map of ancient Egyptian sites from which some of the Museum’s objects originated. This reference station will also offer answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), a section on ancient Egyptian language, a list of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, and a glossary. The reference kiosk is abundantly illustrated with objects from the Museum’s collection.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1995 - 2003. 2003, 024-25. View Original 1 . View Original 2
... more

April 2003: An exhibition selected from the holdings of ‘the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s world-renowned Wilbour Library of Egyptology will include more than 30 books, many of which resulted in the widespread exploration amid excavation of Egypt by both amateurs and professionals. Egypt through Other Eyes, scheduled to open on April 12, is the first in a series of exhibitions to be presented as components of Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, a major expansion of the Museum’s galleries of ancient Egyptian art that will include more than 600 objects, ranging from pre-dynastic material to works created during the reign of Amnunhotep III.

This exhibition of some thirty volumes, ranging from expensive limited-edition folios with engravings and lithographs, and photographs to mass-produced books, is the first of two presentations of material from the Wilbour Library, each of which will be on view for six months. The first will explore the beginnings of Western fascination with Egypt, when explorers and scholars first shared their knowledge of its ancient culture. This exhibition will be succeeded by a presentation of books that helped to popularize Egypt, written by scholars and explorers from the 1820s through the 1922 discovery of Kimig Tutankhamnun’s tomb

Included in Egypt through Other Eyes will be some of the earliest illustrated publications about Egypt, among them the Hieroglyphics, or allegorical emblems, of Horapollo (4th or 5th century ?.?.), whose book was based on the false hypothesis that hieroglyphs were allegorical. Horapollo’s manuscript was discovered in 1419 and was first published in 1505, frequently reprinted and remaining influential until Jean-François Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822. Also included are the works of Athanasius Kircher (1602—1680), whose Hieroglyphs, containing his interpretation of these symbols, was published in the seventeenth century in honor of Pope Innocent X; Frederik Ludvig Norden (1708—1742), and Louis Francois Cassas (1756—1827). The exhibition will also present images from the Description de l'Égypte, the publications that resulted from Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt, including an engraving of an Egyptian zodiac, an image of which has been painted on the ceiling in the newly reinstalled Egyptian galleries. The second segment of the exhibition will feature the work of important Egyptologists such as Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778—1823), Ippolito Baldessare Rossellini (1800—1843), Prisse d'Avennes (1807—1879), and others responsible for the discovery and popularization of Ancient Egypt.

Many of the books on view, as well as objects in the adjacent galleries of ancient Egyptian art, were originally collected by American Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833—1896). Egypt through Other Eyes will also include a sketchbook by the American painter Edwin Blashfieid (1848— 1936), Wilbour’s son-in-law, who accompanied him on his travels on the Nile.

Egypt As Seen Through Other Eyes has been organized by Deirdre E. Lawrence, Principal Librarian and Coordinator of Research Services; James Viskochil, Senior Librarian and Manager of the Wilbour Library; and Mary Gow, Assistant Librarian; in collaboration with the curators of the Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1995 - 2003. 2003, 019-21. View Original 1 . View Original 2 . View Original 3
... more

Winter 2003: Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, a presentation of more than six hundred objects from the world-renowned ancient Egyptian holdings of the Brooklyn Museum of Art will be added to the extraordinary selection currently on view. The new material, three-quarters of which has not been on public view for at least a decade, will be presented in newly refurbished gallery space that will open to the public on April 12, 2003. The new presentation will begin with a thematic installation entitled “Permanence and Change,” encompassing all of ancient Egyptian history. It will be followed by a chronological presentation ranging from the Predynastic Period through the 18th Dynasty reign of Amunhotep III.

Egyptologist James F. Romano, Ph.D., is project director of the reinstallation that has been more than a decade in planning, during the course of which he has reviewed over 4,000 Egyptian objects in the Museum’s galleries and storerooms. Other members of the team are Richard A. Fazzini, Chair, Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, Curators Edna R. Russmann, Ph.D., Edward Bleiberg, Ph.D., and Research Associate Madeleine C. Cody. Each object in the new presentation has been evaluated by the BMA’s conservation laboratory and stabilized and repaired where necessary.

Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities, with additional major support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the BMA’s Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, and funds from private donors. Where New York is a media sponsor.

The new exhibition complements the more than 500 ancient Egyptian treasures now on view, which were installed in 1993 when the newly renovated galleries in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing opened. That installation begins with a chronological presentation of material dating from the Amarna Period and the reign of Amunhotep IV, later known as Akhenaten, and his wife Nefertiti through the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. The final galleries of the 1993 installation contain a thematic presentation entitled “Temples, Tombs, and the Egyptian Universe,” exploring the connection between ancient Egyptian religious beliefs and art.

“Permanence and Change,” the thematic section in Egypt Reborn, is organized around four topics: “Early Life along the Nile,” “Life & Belief,” “Art & Communication,” and “Materials & Technology.” Questions such as how the form and style of pottery changed over the course of 2000 years, how objects left in tombs provide clues about how the Egyptians lived, and how most works of Egyptian sculpture were really three-dimensional hieroglyphs will be addressed. In addition, the gallery display will explore how sculptural form, style, and iconography evolved from 2650 B.C. to the first century A.D. This gallery also contains the doors that originally served as the Museum’s main entrance before the removal of the front staircase in 1934. The doors, which lead out on to a small balcony, will afford visitors a superb view of the new front entrance and plaza area when it is completed.

The chronological presentation will begin with the Predynastic Period and conclude with the 18th dynasty reign of Amunhotep III. The Predynastic Period, dating from 4400 to 3000 B.C., comprised the Badarian Period and the Naqada I, II, and III Periods. This era was characterized by developments in writing and large-scale architecture, and with contacts with Nubia, Mes[o]potamia and other Near Eastern lands. During this time there was increased urbanization and centralization of political authority as distinct cultures were eventually unified from 3000 to 2675 B.C. during the First and Second Dynasties. Among the objects on view in this gallery will be a flint knife with an elaborately carved ivory handle depicting 227 animals of 19 species, an abstract terracotta female figure with outflung arms, and an array of vessels, among them a late Naqada vase, adorned with a painted procession of mammals, created between 3400-3300 B.C.

Three Old Kingdom galleries, encompassing Dynasties 3 through 6 from about 2675 through 2170 B.C., reflect the transition to a more classic expression through royal pyramid tombs and funerary temples with statuary and reliefs, as well as major tombs of powerful private individuals. Among the Old Kingdom material on view is a limestone group statue depicting a man, his wife, and their small son. It was the first major work of Egyptian art ever exhibited in America. Other notable objects in this section include three elaborately painted wooden tomb statues depicting a man at various stages of his life, and an exquisite alabaster statue of King Pepy II, who became king while a small child, seated on the lap of his mother Queen Ankhnes-meryre II.

Among the Middle Kingdom material, covering the first half of Dynasty 11, Dynasty 12, and part of Dynasty 13 (from about 2008 B.C. to 1630 B.C.), will be sections devoted to statues, stelae, and funerary items. Included will be the colossal head of a queen or princess, considered by experts to be one of the finest such surviving sculptures from this major epoch of Egyptian history. It was found at the emperor Hadrian’s Roman villa and is believed to have been part of his collection of ancient Egyptian art. This section also features a quartzite statue thought to have been given to Josephine by Napoleon as a souvenir of his unsuccessful military campaign in Egypt. Among the other objects here are a remarkably preserved black granite statue of Senwosret III, one of the most powerful kings of the Twelfth Dynasty; delightful small faience objects, including a bristling hedgehog and a charming sleeping dog; and a number of objects left by pious pilgrims to Abydos, cult center of the god Osiris.

The Second Intermediate Period installation continues the chronology from the second half of Dynasty 13 through Dynasty 17, covering circa 1630–1539 B.C. Here will be displayed material from the reigns of the six Asian Hyksos kings including a stylized terracotta female fertility figure, a copper statue of a royal princess nursing a child, and a fragment of a relief from an island near Aswan that may have been from a massive altar.

The section devoted to the early New Kingdom, dating from around 1539 to 1353 B.C. will contain several masterpieces from the Museum’s preeminent holdings. Considered by scholars to be the most important period in Egyptian history, it began with the reign of the King Ahmose, who succeeded in defeating the Hyksos and reuniting Egypt. On view will be an extraordinary gilded ebony statue of Amunhotep III, whose reign was distinguished by the opulence and grandeur of the objects and buildings that it produced; a jar painted with a scene of cattle and women; and a kneeling statue of the official Senenmut, chief advisor to the legendary female pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Egypt Reborn will include extensive wall labels, as well as computer terminals that will provide in-depth information about select objects in the presentation. One gallery will be devoted to rotating exhibitions, the first of which will be an exhibition of important material from the Museum’s Wilbour Library of Egyptology including books created for collectors as well as those published for a mass audience. The information, lithographs, engravings, and photographs in these books created the excitement about Egypt that led to excavations by both professionals and amateurs in the 19th century. There will also be a section here devoted to Charles Edwin Wilbour, from whom the BMA received much of the material in its collection. This presentation has been organized by Chief Librarian Deirdre Lawrence, with Wilbour librarians Jim Vishkochil and Mary Gow, along with Egyptologist Edward Bleiberg.

The galleries containing the ancient Egyptian material span the entire length of the front façade of the building, the equivalent of two average city blocks. The principal entrance will be through the newly reinstalled Hagop Kevorkian Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art, containing the Museum’s collection of twelve of the ancient Assyrian reliefs (circa 883–859 B.C.) from the Northwest Palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II in Nimrud (modern Iraq). This gallery has been equipped with motorized lifts that make them completely wheelchair accessible for the first time in the history of the building.

The new presentation will be dramatically different in appearance than the 1993 installation. The thematic gallery will feature a large-scale rendering of an ancient Egyptian map of the heavens mounted on the ceiling, based on a creation by an artist in Napoleon’s retinue and reproduced in a volume in the Wilbour Library. Other features of the new installation will be the introduction of color, including red mica, metallic gold, and deep blue, a colonnade suggesting heaven and earth, and dramatic lighting. Specially designed architectural casework will maintain a constant 50% humidity.

About the Collection
The Brooklyn Museum of Art began collecting ancient Egyptian material in the beginning of the twentieth century. Two early sources of objects were a Brooklyn Museum archaeological expedition from 1906 to 1908 that came about through a relationship with Britain’s Egypt Exploration Fund, and acquisitions from the holdings of private collector Armand de Potter. In 1916, 1935, and 1947, the collection of pioneer American Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833–1896) was given in stages to the BMA. The gifts of Wilbour’s heirs included the contents of his professional library and, in 1931, an endowment in his memory that has funded the establishment of both the Wilbour Library of Egyptology and a curatorial department for ancient Egyptian Art. In 1948 the Museum purchased the Egyptian collection of The New-York Historical Society, which included more than 2,000 objects. Gifts and purchases continue to add significant objects to the collection.

View Original

Press Coverage of this Exhibition

ARTS BRIEFINGApril 8, 2003 By Lawrence Van GelderArts Briefing column: Bancroft Prizes are awarded to James F Brooks for book Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and Community in the Southwest Borderlands and Allan Gallay for The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South (S)
ART REVIEW; Fit for a Pharaoh: Treasures at Home in BrooklynApril 11, 2003 By GRACE GLUECKGrace Glueck reviews Egyptian treasures reinstalled in new space at Brooklyn Museum; photos (M)
ART GUIDEApril 18, 2003 "A selective listing by critics of The Times of new or noteworthy art, design and photography exhibitions at New York museums and art galleries this weekend. At many museums children under 12 and museum members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and..."
ART GUIDEApril 25, 2003 "A selective listing by critics of The Times of new or noteworthy art, design and photography exhibitions at New York museums and art galleries this weekend. At many museums children under 12 and museum members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and..."
ART GUIDEMay 2, 2003 "A selective listing by critics of The Times of new or noteworthy art, design and photography exhibitions at New York museums and art galleries this weekend. At many museums children under 12 and museum members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and..."