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Jan. 22 - Jan. 29, 2012 |
Eternal Ancient Art
Egyptian Masterworks make their Canadian debut at the ROM
By Mark Cirillo
Originally Published: 2004-03-07
On the heels of its recent hit, Art Deco 1910-1939 - which received an impressive 200,000 visitors - the ROM has unveiled a stunning new exhibit that shows promise of even greater success.
Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum, which runs from February 28 to June 6, features 144 of the British Museum's finest Egyptian artworks. These works represent an impressive 3000 years of Egyptian history, from c3100 B.C. to 170 AD.
The exhibit, presented by the AFA (American Federation of Arts) and sponsored by the Ford Motor Company Fund and Ford Canada, has visited eight U.S. cities since May of 2001. Its stay at the ROM is the first of three Canadian stops.
At a news conference held to announce the exhibit's opening, assistant curator Roberta Shaw said Eternal Egypt complements the ROM's already-impressive Egyptian collection, which at 20,000 ranks as Canada's largest.
"As an art show with grand masterpieces from each period of history, Eternal Egypt complements our own permanent Egyptian galleries beautifully," she said. "It covers the same period as our galleries, which tell the story of this great culture mainly through archeological objects of the material culture."
The show contains a great array of objects, from funerary pieces, mummy masks and coffins to jewellery, papyri and portrait painting. Similarly, the artisans who created these great works used a wide variety of materials, including ivory, wood, sandstone, silver and gold.
Senior curator Krzystof Grzymski emphasized that Eternal Egypt gives Torontonians a unique opportunity to glimpse the masterworks of the British Museum's collection, one of the most extensive collections in the world. "The British Museum's astonishing collection will probably never travel again in our lifetime," he said.
The exhibit is organized in chronological order, which allows visitors to trace the evolution of the Egyptian style. For example, in sculpture we can see the move from heavy, muscular forms of the early Old Kingdom to the more slender and youthful figures that characterize the later works of the period. Later in the exhibit we can see the pronounced aesthetic changes brought on by the imperial rule of Greek and Rome.
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