ElAnt v2n1 - MUSEUMS AND ETHICS - J. Paul Getty Museum - Recent Acquisitions

J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Kenneth Hamma,
Antiquities Department,
J. Paul Getty Museum,
Malibu,
California,
U.S.A.
e-mail: ENR33KH@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU

Acquisitions in the antiquities collection have been few to date in the 1994 calendar year. They include:

A Cypriot Red Polished Jug of the Early Bronze Age II, about 2000-1900 B.C., donated by Mr. Kenneth H. Torp. The jug is about 17.8 cm in height and is decorated with incised horizontal lines around the neck and two rows of incised diamonds on the body. Although in fragments, the vessel is nearly complete.

A marble statue of a muse, 97 cm in height. The statue is a Roman copy after a Hellenistic original attributed to Philiskos of Rhodes. Standing in profile to the right she leans slightly forward to rest her left arm on a rocky support. The same type of muse is depicted on the "Apotheosis of Homer" relief in the British Museum (nr 2191) and exists in other copies in the Pergamon Museum (nr 221) which is wrongly restored; in the Capitoline in Rome (nr 2135); and a head only in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen of Dresden (nr 173). The statue was purchased from the collection of Hans Cohn in Los Angeles and has been exhibited on loan at the Getty since 1973. It has been published in By Judgment of the Eye: the Varya and Hans Cohn Collection, Nancy Thomas and Constantina Oldknow, editors, Los Angeles, 1991. The muse joins three of her sisters already in the collection since 1968 and published as nos. 39, 40 and 41 in Catalogue of Ancient Art in the J Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1973.

Visitors:

Prof. Gunter Grimm from Trier will be the visiting scholar in the department this year. He arrives in Los Angeles on 4 July and will be resident until 23 September.

Publications:

A Lex Sacra from Selinous, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Monographs 11 (1993) by Michael H. Jameson, David R. Jordan and Roy D. Kotansky. This is the first publication of an inscription on lead which was given to the Museum in 1981. As it was being studied, its importance not only for the history of Greek religion, but also and particularly for the ancient site of Selinous and the sanctuary of Zeus Meilichios became apparent. The inscription was deaccessioned from the Museum collections and donated to the Republic of Italy on 20 February 1992 to be returned to Sicily.

Exhibitions:

A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman will open at the Getty on 13 October 1994 and close 15 January 1995. The exhibition has been organized by the Getty and the Cleveland Museum of Art where it will be exhibited from 14 February to 23 April 1995. The exhibition includes about 200 objects from all ancient media and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Getty with the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television, will present two ancient comedies: Plautus' Casina and Menander's The Woman from Samos. Michael Hackett, UCLA, will direct the comedies. Richard Beacham (Plautus) and J. Michael Walton (Menander) have provided the translations to be used as scripts, and will be resident at the Museum for rehearsals and production. Walton's translation was recently published by Methuen in Aristophanes and Menander, New Comedy. This production will premier on October 13 and be presented during the evening at the Museum Thursday through Sunday that week and the two following. The set being built for the production is based on depictions of stages in Roman wall painting and on Beacham's interpretation of those paintings.

A schedule of lectures also accompanies the exhibition: Marion True (3 Nov); Lawrence Fleischman on his collection (17 Nov); Sybille Haynes on the Etruscan antiquities (1 Dec); Andrew Oliver, Jr. on the Hellenistic silver (8 Dec); and Maxwell Anderson on connoisseurship (15 Dec).

Kenneth Hamma
e-mail: ENR33KH@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU

COPYRIGHT NOTE: Copyright remains with authors, but due 
reference should be made to this journal if any part of the above is 
later published elsewhere.

Electronic Antiquity Vol. 2 Issue 1 - June 1994
edited by Peter Toohey and Ian Worthington
antiquity-editor@classics.utas.edu.au
ISSN 1320-3606