Museums and the Ancient Middle East

Geoff Emberling is Associate Research Scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan. He has done curatorial work for most of his career, first as Assistant Curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, then as Museum Director and Chief Curator at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. He has also developed exhibits as consulting curator at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, and most recently at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He is also a field archaeologist who has directed projects in Syria and Sudan. Lucas P. Petit is curator of the Near Eastern Department at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities. He curated several successful blockbuster exhibitions including "Petra. Wonder in the Desert" (2013-14) and "Nineveh. Heart of an Ancient Empire" (2017-18), and was responsible for renewing the permanent Middle Eastern galleries. He has had positions at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, and at Leiden University. He has been involved in various archaeological fieldwork projects throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Currently, he co-directs the excavations at Tell Damiyah in Jordan.

Part One: Introductory

Chapter 1 Curating the Ancient Middle East

Geoff Emberling and Lucas Petit

Chapter 2 Museum Displays and the Creation of the Ancient Middle East: A View from the Ashmolean and the British Museum

Paul Collins

Chapter 3 Ancient "Art" in the White Cube? Or How Contemporary Art Creates Ancient "Art"

Pedro Azara and Marc Marín

Part Two: Perspectives from National Museums

Chapter 4 170 Years of Curatorial Practices and Audiences at the Louvre: Exhibiting Ancient Middle Eastern Antiquities from 1847 to 2017

Ariane Thomas

Chapter 5 Gallery 55 at the British Museum: Mesopotamia 1500-539 BC

Irving Finkel and Alexandra Fletcher

Chapter 6 Unlocking Architectures—Communicating Cultures: Ancient Middle Eastern Worlds in the Vorderasiatisches Museum

Lutz Martin

Chapter 7 And Now for Something Completely Different: The Renewal of the Ancient Middle Eastern Gallery in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities

Lucas P. Petit

Chapter 8 The Jordan Museum: Storyteller of Land and People

Yosha Alamri and Jihad Kafafi

Part Three: Perspectives from Art Museums

Chapter 9 Exhibiting Interaction: Displaying the Arts of the Ancient Middle East in their Broader Context

Joan Aruz and Yelena Rakic

Chapter 10 Negotiations in Museum Practice: A Reinstalled Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts

Swarupa Anila and Geoff Emberling

Chapter 11 An Archaeological Exhibition without Archaeology? Joan Miró Looks at Mesopotamian Masterpieces

Pedro Azara and Marc Marín

Part Four: Perspectives from University Museums

Chapter 12 Between visuality and context: Presenting Archaeological Narratives at the Oriental Institute

John D.M. Green

Chapter 13 The Middle East Gallery at the Penn Museum: A Curator’s Reflections on Challenges and Opportunities

Holly Pittman

Chapter 14 The Archaeological Museum of the American University of Beirut and Its Educational Role: A Case Study

Leila Badre

Chapter 15 Beyond Display: Curriculum and Community Engagement with Ancient Middle Eastern Collections in a University Museum

Andrew Jamieson and Annelies Van de Ven

Commentary

Chapter 16 Exhibiting Ancient Middle Eastern Art in America

Peter Lacovara