A recent special exhibition, Making Sense of Marbles: Roman Sculpture at the OI (2022–2023), at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum (formerly Oriental Institute Museum) presented to the public for the first time ISAC’s full collection of Roman sculpture. Assembled in the 1950s—through both acquisitions from ISAC’s excavations at Ptolemais in Libya as part of a system of partage (or the division of finds) and purchases from the international art market, this group exemplifies the importance of revisiting artifact and archival collections with new questions, perspectives, technology, and scrutiny. In its didactics and modes of display, the exhibition tackled timely questions of collecting practices, provenience and provenance, archaeology and the art market, and authenticity, arguing that museums do not require new artifacts, new acquisitions in order to tell new stories. This talk will consider the history of this lesser well-known Roman sculpture collection in Chicago—the objects’ creation and use in antiquity, their rediscovery in the modern day, their acquisition by a Chicago museum, and their modern display history, illustrating the ways in which we can make sense of marbles with divergent histories and the fundamental importance of archaeological context in telling an object’s story.
Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic:
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology
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