LYNBROOK, NEW YORK.- Brooklyn Museum of Art curator James F. Romano, 56, died. According to Nassau County Police Department, James Romano drove off the road and hit a metal fence. James Romano focused his studies in Egyptology. In 1976 he joined the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s department of Egyptian, classical and Middle Eastern art. In 1988 the museum appointed him curator. He had recently finished the second stage of the reinstallation of the museum’s Egyptian collection.

James Romano published "In the Fullness of Time: Masterpieces of Egyptian Art from American Collections" (2002). This was a catalog accompanying an exhibition at the Hallie Ford Museum of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, a presentation of more than six hundred objects from the world-renowned ancient Egyptian holdings of the Brooklyn Museum of Art was added to the extraordinary selection currently on view. The new material, three-quarters of which has not been on public view for at least a decade, will be presented in newly refurbished gallery space that opened to the public on April 12, 2003. The new presentation begins with a thematic installation entitled “Permanence and Change,” encompassing all of ancient Egyptian history. It is followed by a chronological presentation ranging from the Predynastic Period through the 18th Dynasty reign of Amunhotep III.

Egyptologist James F. Romano, Ph.D., is project director of the reinstallation that has been more than a decade in planning, during the course of which he has reviewed over 4,000 Egyptian objects in the Museum’s galleries and storerooms. Other members of the team are Richard A. Fazzini, Chair, Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, Curators Edna R. Russmann, Ph.D., Edward Bleiberg, Ph.D., and Research Associate Madeleine C. Cody. Each object in the new presentation has been evaluated by the BMA’s conservation laboratory and stabilized and repaired where necessary.