Museum Review Archives | American Journal of Archaeology

AlUla: Wonder of Arabia at the Palace Museum, Beijing: Bridging Global Cultural and Archaeological Engagement Between China and the Arab World

website — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:12:37 +0000

The exhibition AlUla: Wonder of Arabia at the Palace Museum in Beijing showcased the civilizations of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly present-day Saudi Arabia, from prehistory to the modern era, through archaeological artifacts unearthed in recent years. In addition to these artifacts, the exhibition incorporated rich audiovisual elements, offering visitors an immersive experience that allowed them to explore the millennia-old livelihoods and civilizations that thrived in the Arabian oases. This review focuses on three main aspects: first, the archaeological significance of the Maritime Silk Road as a broader context for the exhibition; second, an overview of the exhibition itself; and third, a critical review of the exhibition within the context of the Palace Museum’s global vision. Exhibitions like AlUla: Wonder of Arabia, created in collaboration with foreign institutions and scholars, reflect the Palace Museum’s ongoing commitment to cross-cultural exchange and international engagement and thus are intertwined with programs of cultural diplomacy.

The post AlUla: Wonder of Arabia at the Palace Museum, Beijing: Bridging Global Cultural and Archaeological Engagement Between China and the Arab World appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

An Unprecedented Museological Endeavor: The First Kings of Europe Exhibition

website — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:27:15 +0000

The First Kings of Europe, organized by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, is the result of unprecedented international collaboration. The multiyear project, cocurated by William Parkinson and Attila Gyucha, was presented in three North American venues. Featuring more than 700 splendid prehistoric artifacts borrowed from museums across 11 countries in Southeast Europe, the exhibition at the Field Museum traced the evolution of social complexity from Neolithic farming communities to powerful rulers in the Late Iron Age. The exhibition presented a modern multimedia show, offering immersive experiences and inclusive interpretations while also adhering to standard archaeological display practices concerning provenience and placing artifacts in chronological order from the oldest to the most recent. The success of the exhibition was not measured merely by its scale and scope of showcased treasures but also by the unprecedented collaboration it fostered among museums and scholars, celebrating shared cultural heritage. As a milestone in museological endeavors, the First Kings of Europe transcended boundaries, shedding light on the enduring legacy of Southeast Europe’s first kings and queens, during its remarkable journey through North America.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this review contains a photograph of human remains.

The post An Unprecedented Museological Endeavor: The First Kings of Europe Exhibition appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

For Men, About Men: A Review of Legion: Life in the Roman Army

website — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 15:22:10 +0000

The review presents a critical examination of the British Museum’s Legion exhibition from the perspective of a British-Iraqi, female archaeologist. While acknowledging that the exhibition brought together a stellar cast of objects, the author questions whether these were sufficient to sustain an enriching visitor experience without a strong narrative derived from recent research developments in Roman archaeology. In particular, she highlights the lack of reflective moments for visitors, especially around questions of the roles of women, enslaved people, and colonial violence, past and present.

The post For Men, About Men: A Review of Legion: Life in the Roman Army appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

The Reopening of the Museo Nazionale Jatta di Ruvo di Puglia

website — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:46:53 +0000

The Museo Nazionale Jatta in Ruvo di Puglia reopened late in 2023 following a two-year closure for work on the refurbishment of the galleries in the 19th-century Palazzo Jatta and the reinstallation of the collection. The organization of the collection and its display cases and pedestals follow the original scheme from when the museum was formed and its catalogue published by Giovanni Jatta, Jr., in 1869. Rather than reconceive the gallery and exhibition design, the museum focused on restoring the original design, with discreetly installed upgrades for utilities and environmental systems to bring the museum to contemporary standards. In doing so, the museum brings attention to the specific circumstances of the collection’s formation in the 19th-century, which were aimed at preserving some of the ancient cultural patrimony of Ruvo di Puglia. Further, the museum has preserved an important historical viewing context from that period and in so doing provides an occasion to think about how to engage viewers with artifacts in the 21st century. Providing the viewer with the opportunity to see the majority of the collection is admirable, but one needs to consider the best way of providing information to viewers today, when a printed catalogue is in some ways obsolete.

The post The Reopening of the Museo Nazionale Jatta di Ruvo di Puglia appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

Byzantium in “Africa”

website — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 19:54:35 +0000

A major exhibition displacing Europe as the engine that shaped global Christianity is a moment to savor. Africa and Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented northern Africa as a sophisticated and equal partner in the fabrication of visual status in late antiquity instead of as it has customarily been seen, as a derivative province in the Roman world. It drew a general public’s attention to the constitutive role played by lands south of the Mediterranean in the production and circulation of luxury goods, and, through them, in the promulgation of early Christianity.

The post Byzantium in “Africa” appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

An Interdisciplinary Exhibition on Ancient Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass

website — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:10:50 +0000

The exhibition Dig Deeper: Discovering an Ancient Glass Workshop at the Corning Museum of Glass transported the visitor to the ruins of a production site in Roman Palestine. Among the interactive displays of its artifacts, the museumgoer learned about networks, connections, and means of production in the ancient Mediterranean world. Expertly contextualized data from the excavations at the ancient workshop, hands-on material, interactive game consoles, and experimental archaeology anchored this brilliant exhibition. Collectively, this combination made for an engaging and compelling exhibition, and one which impressively spoke to a diverse intergenerational audience. Dig Deeper focused on the excavation of a glass workshop in Jalame el-Asafna (located near Haifa, Israel) and how archaeologists, glass artists, and scientists continue to collaborate to learn more about this important site. As a museum devoted to a single material, and one with a long reputation in the study of ancient glass, this exhibition is well situated within the orbit of the Corning Museum of Glass and its mission focused on art, history, and science.

The post An Interdisciplinary Exhibition on Ancient Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

Bringing Roman Light to Life

website — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Nuova luce da Pompei (New Light from Pompeii) explored the role of artificial light in the lives of ancient Romans. In addition to presenting 180 rarely seen bronzes from Pompeii, including lamps, candelabra, and elegant statues that held lamps, the exhibition demonstrated the effects and meanings these lighting devices generated. Clearly, Roman lamps have lost their agency, presented as objects in museums or in photographs—a problem addressed by encouraging visitors to handle replicas of lamps and to light them virtually. In a virtual reality recreation of the triclinium of the House of Polybius, visitors could use a torch to light lamps and see what they could reveal—or fail to reveal. Videos of elaborate lamps with figures standing on their oil holes were particularly noteworthy, demonstrating their potential for “shadow play.” In addition to plumbing the meanings of the astonishingly varied imagery, the show investigated bronze metallurgy and modern conservation, as well as the role lamps played in the convivium, cult, nighttime pursuits, and commerce. A section on the creation of pastiches and copies evoked the antiquarian culture sparked by the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In its Rome venue, curators added a roomful of rarely seen objects from Rome’s former Antiquarium Comunale.

The post Bringing Roman Light to Life appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

Enheduanna and Her World: Individual Women in Ancient Western Asia

website — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Few ancient Mesopotamian names live in the public memory, even fewer are of women. She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400–2000 B.C. at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, changed that. The exhibition, which was featured on many popular platforms and publications from the New York Times to Hyperallergic, celebrated Enheduanna, the first poet whose name we know, her individuality, agency, and the creative power of her words. At the same time, it highlighted the different roles of women reflected in Sumerian and Akkadian material and visual culture. Exhibits on ancient individuals and individual stories have the potential to change biased historical narratives. By reviewing the curatorial practices of the exhibit, this paper examines the role of She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia in challenging the traditional ancient western Asian canon.

The post Enheduanna and Her World: Individual Women in Ancient Western Asia appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

Ecocriticism on the Wall: Roman Landscapes at the San Antonio Museum of Art

website — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

The recent exhibition at the San Antonio Museum of Art, Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii, brought together a range of works produced between roughly 100 BCE and 200 CE and found in the areas of Rome and the Bay of Naples. This beautifully curated exhibit, as well as the accompanying catalogue, scrutinized and problematized categories like the bucolic, the real versus the mythic, and the meaning of “landscape” itself. It took a deliberately expansive approach to the latter by featuring images diverse in their subject, style, medium, and context, constituting the first instance in which these objects were grouped together in a museum space as part of a broader generic category. With its progression from tranquil scenes of country life, to the dangerous landscapes of myth, to the imagery of tombs and of death itself, the exhibition offered visitors much to reflect on regarding the ways in which humans invent, interact with, harm, and are harmed by the natural environment. Its strong ecocritical framing made this exhibition particularly relevant for current scholarly directions in the field of Roman art, while at the same time centering and historicizing a vital contemporary anxiety.

The post Ecocriticism on the Wall: Roman Landscapes at the San Antonio Museum of Art appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.

Opening Horizons Between Antiquity and Today at Melbourne Museum

website — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000

The exhibition Open Horizons: Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections at Melbourne Museum explored stories of ancient and modern journeys. Featuring ancient artifacts on loan from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens as well as photographs from Melbourne Museum’s own collection which illustrated the history of Greek migration to Australia in more recent centuries, the exhibition invited its viewers to consider the impact of travel of both objects and people on how ideas spread. On display in April–August 2022, exploring this subject at this time had particular significance given most people’s recent experiences with lockdowns and difficult travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the exhibition touched on complex themes such as colonization in the ancient Mediterranean and the resonance of the term to a contemporary audience. Although this could have been explored in more detail in this space, the organizers should be commended for starting the conversation so that many more can follow. A beautiful display and a wide variety of objects, coupled with materials directly relevant to its Australian setting, made this exhibition a worthwhile visit.

The post Opening Horizons Between Antiquity and Today at Melbourne Museum appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.