NEW YORK.- A spectacular “museum-within-the-museum” for the display of its extraordinary collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman art – much of it unseen in New York for generations – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this April in its New Greek and Roman Galleries. After more than five years of construction, the long-awaited opening will conclude a 15-year project for the complete redesign and reinstallation of the Museum’s superb collection of classical art. Returning to public view in the new space are thousands of long-stored works from the Metropolitan's collection, which is considered one of the finest in the world. The centerpiece of the New Greek and Roman Galleries is the majestic Leon Levy and Shelby White Court – a monumental, peristyle court for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art, with a soaring two-story atrium.

“The New Greek and Roman Galleries are a milestone in an unprecedented building campaign –more than a dozen years in the making – to construct anew within the framework of our historic building, to make use of new methodologies while honoring the old, and to encourage our visitors to look at ancient art in a new way,” commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. “Some 6,000 works previously in storage, many of them collected in the earliest years after the Museum's founding in 1870, will now be installed on two levels of commodious new galleries by our brilliant team of curators under the leadership of Carlos Picón, Curator in Charge of the Department of Greek and Roman Art, and with the outstanding organizational abilities of Collections Coordinator Bill Gagen. As we celebrate this landmark event, we remember with gratitude the generosity of our many friends, past and present, who have made this possible – among them Shelby White and her late husband Leon Levy, and our dear friends the late Bill Blass and the late Frank A. Cosgrove, Jr., whose generous gifts have made possible this glorious new exhibition space for Greek and Roman art.”

Shelby White commented: “My late husband, Leon Levy, believed that by studying past civilizations we would better understand ourselves. What better setting to do that than these magnificent new galleries. I am thrilled.”

“The fashion designer Bill Blass was a collector of truly discerning taste,” noted Carlos Picón, “with a passionate interest in the ‘classics’ of many time periods – including antiquities.

Although he had been a loyal and active member of our departmental friends group for many years, the bequest of half of his estate to the Department of Greek and Roman Art was immensely gratifying and a complete surprise.”

He continued: “Similarly, Frank Cosgrove – who had an interest in Greek and Roman art – also made a very significant bequest to the Metropolitan, which was made known to the Museum following his death in 1992. We feel certain that he would have been delighted to see these new galleries. It is with great pleasure that the Museum places the names of these two men in the galleries that contain superb examples of art that they both esteemed.”

The New Greek and Roman Galleries, located in The Lamont Wing at the southern end of the building, will house art created between about 900 B.C. and the early fourth century A.D., tracing the parallel stories of the evolution of Greek art in the Hellenistic period and the arts of southern Italy and Etruria, culminating in the rich and varied world of the Roman Empire. On the first floor, contiguous to the central Leon Levy and Shelby White Court on three sides, are galleries for Hellenistic and Roman art. The installation continues on the wholly redesigned mezzanine level, where galleries for Etruscan art and the Greek and Roman study collection overlook the court from two sides. Together, the astonishing assembly of works on display – some never before seen by the public – will bring to life the visual and conceptual roots of Western civilization.

LEON LEVY AND SHELBY WHITE COURT
The focal point of the new galleries is the spectacular Leon Levy and Shelby White Court for Hellenistic and Roman art, which occupies an area created by the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White between 1912 and 1926. The atrium, which evoked the ambulatory garden of a large private Roman villa, has been transformed through the addition of another story and a dazzling colored marble floor into a much grander space befitting its location as the culmination of the Museum’s display for its outstanding Greek and Roman collections. The McKim, Mead and White atrium served to display Roman art for a mere two decades before being converted into the Museum's restaurant and cafeteria. Although the new design introduces several features, it remains faithful to the architects’ original concept: a classically inspired architectural style and a glass roof that allows the objects below to be viewed in natural daylight. On view in the center of the court will be nearly 20 Roman sculptures created between the first century B.C. and the third century A.D., that demonstrate a range of materials, styles, and subject matter.

The Old Market Woman (Roman, first century A.D.) is a realistic study in marble of an elderly woman in an elegant dress, thong sandals, and a crown of Dionysiac ivy leaves. She is dressed for a festival, and the chickens and basket of fruit she carries are probably offerings for Dionysus, god of wine.

The life-size bronze Portrait Statue of a Boy (Roman, Augustan period, late first century B.C.- early first century A.D.), depicts a youth on the threshold of adulthood. Treasured more highly than marble, bronze statues were common in the Hellenistic and Roman periods but were routinely melted down in later periods. Thus, life-sized Roman bronzes are rare in modern collections.

Roman admiration for Greek culture is evident in the marble statue of Dionysus, god of wine and divine intoxication (Roman, first century A.D., copy of a Greek original). He wears a panther skin over his short chiton and high sandals, with animal heads on the overhanging skin flaps. He stands beside an archaistic female image, whose pose and dress imitate those of Greek statues carved in the sixth century B.C. This work is known as the Hope Dionysos, after the prominent collector Thomas Hope, who acquired it in 1796.

Two larger-than-life-size statues of Hercules face one another from either side of the court (both Roman, Flavian, first century A.D.) A lion skin is draped over the left arm of the young, beardless Hercules. The older, bearded Hercules wears the lion skin across his shoulders, with the lion’s head and mane forming a hood on his head. Both works were part of the Giustiniani Collection in Rome, first published in 1631.

The purple stone called porphyry (from the Greek word for purple) was especially prized for monuments and building projects in Imperial Rome. A decorative support for a basin (Roman, second century A.D.) owes its appeal as much to the vibrant color of the stone as to the bold, clear carving. The stone was imported from quarries in the eastern deserts of Upper Egypt. The support formed part of the collection of William Waldorf Astor, later Baron Astor of Hever, who assembled his collection of antiquities between 1890 and 1905.