HOUSTON, TX.- Art and Life om Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times opens this Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts, bringing unprecedented loans to the U.S. from the renowned antiquities collections of Italian museums. The exhibition will debut at the MFAH from November 2, 3035 through January 25, 2026 and then will be presented at the Saint Louis Museum of Art in March 2026.

The extensive presentation brings to life the extraordinary reign of Trajan, who ruled the Roman empire at its height; it is the first major exhibition in the U.S. dedicated to Trajan and his era.

“This is truly a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to experience spectacular objects from this glorious era of the Roman Empire,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH. “We are enormously grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Naples and Vatican City for lending these treasures to us and broadening the appreciation of Italy’s cultural heritage.”

Trajan commanded the Roman Empire between 98 and 117 CE. A soldier-emperor, he was the second of the so-called “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty; his military and imperial successes launched him to popular fame. Born Marcus Ulpius Traianus into an elite family in what is now Andalusia, Spain, Trajan became the first of Rome’s emperors born outside of present-day Italy. As emperor, he granted citizenship and the rights that came with it to people from the far-reaching provinces that his forces conquered, expanding and fundamentally changing the concept of what it meant to be Roman.

The exhibition will explore how art was used during Trajan’s era: privately, in the houses of the elite, and publicly, in the forums and public buildings as propaganda to promote the empire’s values as it was expanded to its greatest extent. The objects on view will tell the many stories – cultural, social, political, and economic - of life in imperial Rome, immersing visitors in the majesty of Trajan’s world at the turn of the second century CE. Featured will be rarely displayed marble portrait busts and statues of the men and women who shaped the Roman world of Trajan’s dynasty, as well as vivid frescoes and ornate furnishings from the villas of Pompeii. Lending historical and visual context to these remarkable artworks in Houston will be a recreation of a section of Trajan’s Column– a towering pillar with a spiraling narrative frieze that is one of the few monumental sculptures to have survived the fall of Rome. Its 155 scenes and 2,662 carved figures depict two major campaigns against the Dacian kingdom between 102 and 106 CE, Trajan’s crowning military triumph; the vignettes unfold in a frieze the length of the 100-foot column.

The exhibition features some 160 objects, many on view in the U.S. for the first time. Lenders include the Museo Nazionale Romano, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ostia and the Musei Vaticani.