For over a century, scholars have recognized an "orientalizing period" in the history of early Greek art, in which Greek artisans fashioned works of art under the stimulus of Near Eastern imports or resident foreign artisans. Previous studies have emphasized the role of Greek and Phoenician traders in bringing about these contacts with the civilizations of the ancient Near East and Egypt, debating their duration or intensity in the Greek world. In this study, Ann Gunter interrogates the categories of "Greek" and "Oriental" as problematic and shifts emphasis to modes of contact and cultural transfers within a broader regional setting. Her provocative study places Greek encounters with the Near East and Egypt in the context of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which by the 8th and 7th centuries BCE extended from southern Turkey to western Iran. Using an expanded array of archaeological and textual sources, she argues that crucial aspects of the identity and meaning of foreign works of art were constructed through circumstances of transfer, ownership, and display.

Greek Art and the Orient

Arts & Photography

Gunter, Ann C.

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

For over a century, scholars have recognized an "orientalizing period" in the history of early Greek art, in which Greek artisans fashioned works of art under the stimulus of Near Eastern imports or resident foreign artisans. Previous studies have emphasized the role of Greek and Phoenician traders in bringing about these contacts with the civilizations of the ancient Near East and Egypt, debating their duration or intensity in the Greek world. In this study, Ann Gunter interrogates the categories of "Greek" and "Oriental" as problematic and shifts emphasis to modes of contact and cultural transfers within a broader regional setting. Her provocative study places Greek encounters with the Near East and Egypt in the context of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which by the 8th and 7th centuries BCE extended from southern Turkey to western Iran. Using an expanded array of archaeological and textual sources, she argues that crucial aspects of the identity and meaning of foreign works of art were constructed through circumstances of transfer, ownership, and display.

Between 1986 and 1990, Ann Gunter and Paul Jett studied two collections of Iranian metalwork at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. 271 pages, mostly black and white pictures, a few color plates.

Ancient Iranian Metalwork in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art

Jett, Paul

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

In 2014, the Metropolitan Museum presented Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age, an unprecedented exhibition that offered a comprehensive overview of art, diplomacy, and cultural exchange in the ancient Near East and across the Mediterranean at the beginning of what is now known as the classical age. This volume extends the innovative scholarship that underpinned the exhibition and accompanying book of the same title. Focusing on a time of transition, upheaval, and globalization, 27 essays by internationally distinguished scholars explore the cultural encounters of diverse populations interacting through trade, travel, migration, and war during the first millennium B.C. in a region that spanned over 1,000 miles in a continuous swathe from Assyria (present-day northern Iraq) to the western Mediterranean and northern Africa.

Assyria to Iberia: Art and Culture in the Iron Age: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia

López-Ruiz, Carolina

Van De Mieroop, Marc

COLLINS, Paul

Aruz, Joan

Bahrani, Zainab

Finkelstein, Israël

Aubet, María Eugenia

Gubel, Eric

Tubb, Jonathan N.

Graff, Sarah

Killebrew, Ann E.

Gansell, Amy

Reich, Ronnie

Novák, Mirko

Özyar, Ash

Hill, Marsha

Winter, Irene J.

Boardman, Sir John

Feldman, Marian

Wolf-Dietrich, Niemeier

Caubet, Annie

Papalexandrou, Nassos

Matthäus, Hartmut

Stampolidis, Nicholas Chr.

Sannibale, Maurizio

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) made his money as a railroad-car manufacturer. A discerning collector, he assembled one of the finest collections of Asian Art at the turn of the nineteenth century and during three trips to Egypt, between 1906 and 1909, he developed a passion for Egyptian art. He gave his collections to the United States, plus funds for a building to house them and in 1923, the Freer Gallery of Art was opened as the first Smithsonian Museum for Fine Art. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished letters, diaries and other sources, A Collector's Journey documents Freer's experience in Egypt and discusses the place Egyptian art occupied in his collection's aims. From jewel-like ancient glass vessels to sacred amulets with supposed magical properties to impressive stone guardian falcons and more, the Freer Egyptian collection is diverse, beautiful and important.

A Collector's Journey: Charles Lang Freer & Egypt

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Scala Publishers

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