We built this (first) city on rock (and roll)
June 24, 2003 11:26 AM   Subscribe

Art of the First Cities. An excellent online gallery courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art focusing on the beginnings of urbanization that have led to the city as a heart of the Western world. More on the brick-and-mortar exhibit here and, as a special bonus, another great online exhibit of artifacts of the Greek world from the Penn Museum (available in Greek too!)
posted by The Michael The (5 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
For further art and archaeological love, more excellent online galleries from both the Met and the Penn Museum can be found here (most exhibits have an online portion; go to the exhibition page and follow the links) and here respectively. Both are extremely encompassing and rich, so please do enjoy.
posted by The Michael The at 11:27 AM on June 24, 2003


Grea - thankyou very much.
posted by plep at 12:40 PM on June 24, 2003


Very nice links The Michael The - thanks! And good to be reminded that the geography that is currently the source of so much conflict is also the cradle of our civilization. *sigh.*

I like this...there is a nice collection of cylinder seals in the Boston Museum of Fine Art that I recently discovered. I also liked this female figure - funeral arts are always interesting to me. Lots of good stuff here to explore.
posted by madamjujujive at 3:20 PM on June 24, 2003


Madam JJJ, if you can and are willing, I would definitely recommend coming down to to see the exhibit in person... some of the cylinder seals are just amazing; a lot of the artifacts are on loan from the Penn and British museums, and a few from a rare loan from the Syrian national museum. Heck, the whole thing is amazing.
Disclaimer: I'm huge into archaeology, so it holds great special interest for me; thus my enthusiasm may be a tad overstated.

On a tangent, I was just at the Boston MFA in April; I loved the Egyptian galleries, which were some of the best I've seen. Maybe not as comprehensive as the Met, but fantastic in quality. My girlfriend actually has a magazine page of King Menkaure and his queen tacked up above the very computer on which I type this, and we were pleasantly surprised to find it at the MFA (it's a gorgeous piece). The Brooklyn Museum just reopened its fantastic Egyptian galleries, and they have some stellar Near Eastern wall pieces as well (I plan to acquire one once I'm filthy rich... which will be never).
posted by The Michael The at 3:48 PM on June 24, 2003


Well thanks for the added info....not sure if I can squeeze a trip in before August, but who knows?
Yes the Boston MFA does have a fine Egyptian collection. I am a real neophyte about antiquities, but every time I go, I learn a bit more.
...and you have a girlfriend? curses, foiled again ;-)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:00 PM on June 24, 2003


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