Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from The British Museum

This exhibition has been organized by the American Federation of Arts of Arts and the British Museum.

	1. Bronze Statuette of Pimay

No ancient civilization has left a larger or more varied artistic legacy than Egypt, yet exhibitions of Egyptian art have traditionally emphasized its importance as historical documentation rather than as an extraordinary flowering of art. Eternal Egypt will be the first major exhibition to take an art-historical approach to this great culture, and the first in this country to be drawn solely from the British Museum’s collection of Egyptian antiquities. Famous masterpieces and little-known treasures will provide an overview of the richness and scope of this outstanding collection.

Selected by guest curator Edna R. Russmann of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, New York, who has collaborated closely with the staff of this department and especially with Nigel Strudwick, the almost one hundred and fifty objects in the exhibition will span the full range of Pharaonic history, from shortly before the First Dynasty, about 3100 B.C., to the Roman occupation of the fourth century A.D. The works will be arranged chronologically to reveal the development of Egyptian art over thirty-five centuries. The four periods into which ancient Egyptian history is divided – the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom and the Late Period – will form the underlying structure of the exhibition. Within each section, the unique and innovative aspects of the period’s art, as well as its characteristic styles, forms and genres, will be demonstrated.

2. Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Nakht: Worshipping Osiris

The Old Kingdom
Egypt’s earliest Pharaonic art will be shown in the section devoted to the art of the early dynasties and the Old Kingdom (about 3100-2150 B.C.). Among the themes explored will be the establishment of artistic conventions and standards; the rise of kingship and its decisive role in the formation of Egyptian art; the simultaneous developments in art and hieroglyphic writing and the interplay of these modes of expression; and the way in which religious and magical beliefs led to the centrality of the human figure in Egyptian art. Included here will be a selection from the period between the collapse of the Old Kingdom and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Though provincial and unsophisticated, even ingenuous, these intermediate works preserved the artistic conventions of the Old Kingdom for later generations.

The Middle Kingdom
The section devoted to the Middle Kingdom (about 2060-1633 B.C.) will focus on important developments in relief and free-standing sculpture, including the introduction of greater naturalism and new artistic forms such as the block statue and the anthropoid coffin. Also featured will be portraiture, an invention of the early Old Kingdom that became a recurrent genre in Egyptian art. While the exhibition will include examples of portraits from every period, the full importance and function of portraiture in Egyptian art is most apparent during the Middle Kingdom, with imposing images like those of the ruler Sesostris III (about 1878-1843 B.C.) and slightly later statues portraying non-royal personages.

3. Mummy Mask of Satdjehuty

The New Kingdom
The New Kingdom (about 1550-1070 B.C.), which witnessed the expansion of the Egyptian empire during the Eighteenth Dynasty, the religious revolution of the Amarna Period, and the Ramesside Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, will be represented by statues and personal possessions of famous pharaohs including Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Ramses the Great, as well as some of their followers. The growing sophistication of this period was reflected in newly elaborate imagery, the creation of colossal royal figures, the startlingly exaggerated stylistic innovations of the Amarna revolution and the revisionist art of the counter-reformation that followed. This section will also include examples of the jewellery, mirrors, cosmetic containers and other luxury items that were widely produced during the New Kingdom.

The Late Period
The Late Period, running from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (1069 B.C.) through the Ptolemaic period (Alexander the Great to Cleopatra VII, about 305-30 B.C.) to the Roman occupation (30 B.C. to 642 A.D.), is the longest, most complex and least defined of Egypt’s historical eras.

Despite the country’s increasing political weakness during the Late Period, the culture was still strong, and art continued to show remarkable vitality. A key theme of this final section will be the ways in which Egyptian art was able to renew itself, primarily through archaism – the imitation of its own past. Although for much of its history, Egyptian art remained more or less impervious to foreign influences and ideas, under the Ptolemies, it became strongly influenced by the Hellenistic style. This section of the exhibition will examine the complex interaction between these strong but very different artistic traditions. Examples of the "mixed" style will show how the two traditions could either enrich or contradict each other, as in the case of Roman-period mummies, which were wrapped in traditional Egyptian fashion while their attached shrouds or face panels were painted in Greco-Roman style and costume.

Eternal Egypt, which has been seen by millions of people, is on a ten-city North American tour funded by the Ford Motor Company Fund. Montreal will have the last chance to appreciate these masterpieces that have never before left the British Museum. Additional support for the exhibition has been provided by the Benefactors Circle of the AFA.

It is being presented by the American Express Foundation in co-operation with METRO and the Volunteer Association of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, January 27 to May 23, 2005. The installation at the Museum has been conceived by Nathalie Bondil, Chief Curator, and Christiane Michaud, scenic designer, in collaboration with Ronald Leprohon, professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto.

Catalogue
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. The contents will include a major essay by the guest curator on such topics as archaism, portraiture and stylistic innovation in Egyptian art; an essay on the formation of the British Museum’s collection of Egyptian antiquities by Harry James, formerly Keeper of Egyptian Art at the British Museum; and entries on all the objects in the exhibition. On sale at the Museum’s Boutique and Bookstore: $49.95 (tax not included). An audioguide explaining the exhibition is available at the entrance: rental $5.