Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art records

Beginning in 1898, a year after the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences opened its central building, the Museum began actively collecting Egyptological and classical objects, either through private donations or sponsored excavations. Prior to 1932, when the Department of Antiquities¹ was created, the Museum acquired Egyptian and classical objects through the efforts and guidance of William H. Goodyear, the first curator of the Department of Fine Arts. By the mid-1930s, the newly established curatorial department was also funneling resources into scholarly publications, exhibitions and installations, preservation, and special projects.

Goodyear acquired the first Egyptian objects for the Museum through a donation by Amelia B. Edwards in 1898 and worked steadily to enhance the collection. In 1904 he recounted:

. . . in the past year the Museum has also made a beginning in the direction of Greco-Roman and Egyptian antiquities, and in the latter field it is now favored with the help of Dr. Wm. Flinders Petrie in the choice of purchases. . . . In Greek and italic pottery the Museum has 23 pieces, well distributed as regards types and periods for the given number. The ancient terra cottas number 10; the bronze vessels, 5; iron tools, 6, and other metals (hinges and an iron chain), 11.²

French Egyptologist Henri de Morgan was an important contributor of artifacts in these early years. De Morgan organized two expeditions (1906 and 1908) of the predynastic cemeteries of Upper Egypt (Esneh district), donating prehistoric objects from these excavations to the Museum in 1909. De Morgan was an important early figure in the field of Egyptology. Through his system of dating and identifying the sequence of objects, he divided prehistoric Egyptian culture into two distinct types with different customs. Goodyear greatly valued de Morgan’s theory and decided that “this division will be illustrated in the installation and labeling of the exhibits from his excavations.”³ Henri de Morgan’s brother Jacques, who was also an Egyptologist, donated a gift of a cataloged selection of duplicates from his excavations at Susa in 1908. That same year, the Museum purchased an Egyptian collection that included bronzes, amulets, and a mummy coffin from Armand de Potter.

The Museum also acquired objects directly through archaeological excavations, developing an important relationship with the British-based Egypt Exploration Fund, later known as the Egypt Exploration Society. In return for financial support, the Museum received a share of the objects excavated by the Fund. This arrangement would continue throughout the century and be a critical source of objects for the Museum collection.

By 1909, Goodyear had begun installing the objects acquired from de Potter, de Morgan, and the Egypt Exploration Fund. He was occupied with installing and labeling the Egyptian collections for many years. He once wrote about the objects: “coming, as they do, from many different sources, and having been acquired at many different dates since 1901, when the Egypt Exploration Fund made its first donation to the Museum, this task has been one of exacting character.”⁴

Other donors helped to augment the collection. Robert B. Woodward donated a group of rare Egyptian polychromatic specimens and A. Augustus Healy donated twenty-one Tanagra figurines to supplement the Greek pottery collection. In 1914, on behalf of the Museum, Professor T. Whittemore of the Egypt Exploration Fund excavated Egyptian antiquities at Sawama, near the city of Akhmim. Whittemore also brought back rare animal mummies from the ibis cemetery at Abydos. In 1915, the Museum purchased 183 pieces of Byzantine-period Coptic Egyptian textiles.

In 1916, the heirs of Charlotte Wilbour, who had been married to the noted Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour, donated objects from Wilbour’s collection and his Egyptological library. A year later this donation was augmented by a collection of Egyptian gold jewelry and other objects from Charlotte and Charles Edwin’s daughter Theodora Wilbour. In 1921, the family also donated a group of Egyptian antiquities, mainly amulets. The generosity of the Wilbour family had a profound impact on the Museum in 1932, when the bequest of Victor Wilbour, the only son of Charles and Charlotte, established the Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund to enlarge the Egyptian collections. The Wilbour Fund was crucial to the future of Egyptology at the Museum, establishing both the Wilbour Library of Egyptology, which contained Wilbour’s extensive Egyptological books, and a curatorial department for ancient Egyptian art, which was then called the Department of Antiquities.

The Museum hired Egyptian archaeologist Jean Capart as Honorary Curator of Egyptology. Capart began cataloging and reinstalling the Egyptian collection, while also recommending purchases from dealers and collectors throughout the world. Under his guidance, the gallery space for Egyptian objects was reorganized and officially reopened on May 19, 1933, as The Charles Edwin Wilbour Memorial Hall. He arranged the objects to show the full chronology of ancient Egyptian history and culture, from prehistoric times until the conquest of Egypt by the Roman Empire. The collection in 1933 was, as described by then-director William Henry Fox:

. . . particularly rich in the objects of the 18th Dynasty and the period of Tell-el-Amarna and King Akhenaten, and it is felt that the Museum can be of the most benefit to the community if we specialize, more or less, in this period and make no attempt to compete with the other larger collections that have already had many years building-up in other museums of the city. It is through this period that the present day can obtain the clearest view of the ancient Egyptians.⁵

There began a flurry of inspired activity in the department. The curators started to direct resources into publishing scholarly works, such as series, monographs, and articles. Along with Claire Preaux of the Egyptological Foundation of Queen Elisabeth, Brussels, Capart surveyed and cataloged the Greek ostraka. A loan exhibition belonging to Mrs. John Morris, Ancient Glass Beads & Related Objects, opened in December 1933. Assistant Curator Edwin L. M. Taggart wrote the Short Guide to the Charles Edwin Wilbour Collection. New acquisitions included a “walking lion” of the Saitic period, a votive-pectoral of Ptolemy V, and a sketch of Queen Nefertiti on a limestone flake.

In 1934, work continued on the reinstallation of objects and the cataloging of the entire collection. A special installation of photographs of Egypt and archaeological sites coincided with the official opening of the Wilbour Library. The Egypt Exploration Society contributed objects to the Museum and Capart also purchased objects during trips to Egypt, including a recumbent lion in granite dating to late Egyptian times. He also obtained an elaborately decorated coffin that contained a mummy.

The Museum created a new classical division within the department in order to provide proper care for a small but steadily growing collection of objects of ancient Greek and Roman origin, including a quantity of bronzes, ceramics, glass, jewelry, and terracottas acquired through purchases and loans. On November 23, 1934, a Classical Court (now known as the Beaux-Arts Court) located within the third-floor central rotunda officially opened to display these objects. The objects were organized in a way that did not “trace artistic evolution; rather, the aim was to give a sense of the daily life of the times.” Objects were displayed in cases illustrating ceremonial rites, warfare, medicine, household activities, industry, and other cultural themes. Large hand-lettered and illustrated labels linked objects with their sociological and historical background.⁶ In the division of classical art, Taggart and his staff recataloged and accessioned objects.

With new resources and a developing collection, Capart began to initiate larger projects, including the installation of an entire room of sculptured limestone from the Tomb of Thary in 1935. That same year, the department worked extensively on labels, combining specialized object labels with more general thematic labels. Capart and Taggart also conceived of a “scientific” project that involved measuring and classifying the collection of prehistoric Egyptian skulls by type in order to discover the origins of the Egyptian people.⁷ The exhibition Chalice of Antioch and Accompanying Antioch Treasure opened in December 1935. It was the first time that this early collection of Christian art had been publicly exhibited on the East Coast of North America.

During John D. Cooney’s first year as curator in 1936, the department renovated storage space to house the collection adequately. It also published the Wilbour Diary, a record of the activities and discoveries of Charles Edwin Wilbour. The same year, the New-York Historical Society lent the Museum its collections of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, realizing that the Brooklyn Museum was better equipped to house and display them. Installed separately in the Wilbour Hall, the Society’s objects greatly enhanced the Brooklyn Museum’s collection.

As curator, Cooney traveled to Egypt and the Near East, visiting monuments and excavations and making a survey of various sites that were under Egyptian rule during the 18th Dynasty. He also contributed resources from the Charles Wilbour Fund to the Egypt Exploration Society’s excavations at Amara in Nubia.

Important acquisitions at this time included a variety of Coptic sculpture and textiles, which were featured in Paganism and Christianity in Egypt (1942), the first exhibition of Coptic art in the United States. The purchase of a bronze incense burner, a stone carving of a panther’s head, and a tunic enhanced this exhibition. The department published a number of studies in the early 1940s, including the first volume of The Wilbour Papyrus, which concerned a papyrus dating from the reign of Ramesses V that had been purchased by the Museum in 1935.

During World War II, John Cooney served in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer in London. While overseas he scoured the dealers and collectors for objects and acquired new works for the Museum, such as a copper figurine of a mother and child dating from the early Middle Kingdom and a glass vase of lapis lazuli blue from the 18th Dynasty. He also acquired books for the Wilbour Library, which were regularly shipped to Brooklyn. During the war years, Elizabeth Riefstahl assumed the titular duties of curator, while continuing to serve as librarian of the Wilbour Library.

In 1948 the New-York Historical Society’s collections of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, which the Brooklyn Museum had housed since the 1930s, were permanently acquired and incorporated into the Charles Edwin Wilbour collection. The curators reevaluated the gallery space and installation in consideration of the absorption of the society’s collection, deciding to reserve the Wilbour Gallery for the finest objects and earmark the large gallery in the west wing for study collections.

Also during the late 1940s, staff began to evaluate objects and initiate extensive conservation projects that would continue for many years. This work began in 1948 with the examination of a large bequest from Theodora Wilbour—a group of ten intact and sealed Aramaic papyri from the Jewish colony at Aswan. Professor Emil Kraeling prepared the first publication regarding these papyri in the 1950s. The tedious task of assembling their scattered fragments continued throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.

In the 1950s, the department continued to develop the collection. It allocated resources for excavations, exhibitions, scholarly publications, and installations, the latter of which began to emphasize art history rather than ancient history, religion, or archaeology. In the early part of the decade, the Museum contributed Wilbour funds to excavations, including an expedition in Sudan at Soba, a Christian site south of Khartoum. Museum trustees also allocated funds for an expedition to Tangasi, an area in Sudan associated with the Late Meroitic or early Christian era. In 1953, a new installation of the renovated Egyptian galleries received critical acclaim.

The department acquired several important objects during the 1950s, such as an Old Kingdom wooden sculpture and a 25th Dynasty black granite block statue from the collector Charles Pratt. Other acquisitions included a number of reliefs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (several came from the tomb of Nespakashuty’ and were restored and installed in 1986) and, in 1956, a limestone doorjamb, the mate to one that had been donated by William Flinders Petrie fifty years earlier. Purchases at this time included a Third Dynasty relief of the royal official Akhty-hotep from North Saqqara, a Middle Kingdom statue mounted on a limestone base, and several New Kingdom objects, such as a life-size limestone torso of Akhenaten found in the excavations at Amarna in 1891. In 1958, the department reinstalled the Coptic and classical collections, which had been in storage. Curators also prepared the Museum’s west wing for the installation of the Ramesside and Late Period collections, which opened in 1959.

Bernard Bothmer joined the staff of the department in 1956. One of his early curatorial accomplishments included the organization of the exhibition Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period (1960), featuring objects from institutions in Egypt, Europe, Canada, and the United States. This exhibition marked the first time in its history that the Cairo Museum lent Egyptian objects to an institution in the United States. It was also the first time that the Louvre Museum allowed Egyptian objects to leave France. As Museum Director John Cooney later wrote: “This generous cooperation resulted in an exhibition of such distinction that it was one of the most successful ever held in the Museum.”⁸

The department purchased an important group of ten late Dynasty 18 limestone reliefs in 1960. Two years later the reinstallation of the east galleries began, which included recently accessioned objects from Dynasties 12 through 18 and a few additional cases in the Old Kingdom section. The galleries reopened in 1963.

In 1962 there were impressive additions to the department’s holdings of classical art. Mary Olcott bequeathed an important collection of Greek vases to the Museum in memory of her brother and grandfather. The Museum also purchased a limestone sculpture of the head of the god Helios. During the summer of 1963 the Museum’s collection of Hellenistic and Roman bronzes, which were part of the Harriman bequest of 1921, were studied, cleaned, and cataloged.

Following a leave of absence for a Fulbright fellowship in 1963, curator Bernard Bothmer served as Project Director on an expedition to Mendes, located halfway between Cairo and the Mediterranean at Damietta. Bothmer initiated this project in order to train American students in modern stratigraphic field methods in Egypt and to learn more about the archaeology of the Nile Delta of Lower Egypt. This excavation continued through the 1980s with funding from a group of supporters known as the “Friends of Mendes.” Beginning in 1966, the department received federal grants for a number of overseas archaeological projects, including the construction of scale models of Egyptian monuments and sites, the study of ancient Egyptian goldwork, and a photographic survey of ancient sites in the Nile Valley.

In 1969, with funding from the Kevorkian Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum established the Department of Middle Eastern Art and Archaeology under the curatorship of Charles K. Wilkinson. Museum director Thomas Buechner announced the creation of the new department in the Museum’s annual report, noting that it would “contain the Ancient and Islamic Middle East collections, now the responsibility of the Departments of Ancient Art and Oriental Art.”⁹

At the same time, the Department of Egyptian and Classical Art continued to flourish under the curatorship of Bernard Bothmer. In 1970, Thomas Buechner acknowledged Bothmer’s work by noting:

I must confess great professional pride in one area in which I had no effect: the galleries of ancient art. Bernard Bothmer’s beautiful installations continue, as they did before I came, to be among the Museum’s most impressive. Always well maintained and constantly enriched with new acquisitions, they were further improved this year with the addition of a refurbished funerary gallery.¹⁰

The 1972 exhibition Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Art from the Age of the Sun King featured an impressive catalog prepared by Cyril Aldred, Keeper of Art and Archaeology at the Royal Scottish Museum. Also in 1972, Elizabeth Riefstahl edited a publication on objects in the collection called Miscellanea Wilbouriana, named in honor of Charles Edwin Wilbour. Department staff also advised and assisted in the installation of the newly built Luxor Museum in Egypt.

In the late 1970s, the department focused on the reinstallation of several galleries, including one dedicated to Aegean, Greek, Roman, and Coptic art and another one displaying Egyptian art of the Ramesside and Third Intermediate Periods. In 1976, the Museum began participating in an archaeological project at Thebes, which became an excavation of the Precinct of the Goddess Mut at Karnak, the site of the main state temples in southern Egypt.

In 1978, the department organized the monumental exhibition Africa in Antiquity: The Arts of Ancient Nubia and the Sudan. Africa in Antiquity was the first international show of ancient art from Africa south of Egypt. Twenty-five institutions in the United States, Europe, and Africa lent more than 250 objects, covering the history of Nubia and the Sudan from 3000 B.C. to the twelfth century A.D.

Charles Wilkinson, who had been curator of the Department of Middle Eastern Art and Archaeology since 1969, was succeeded by Irma Fraad in October 1974. Fraad was followed by Madeline Noveck in 1976. Noveck left in 1979, at which point the department was dissolved and the collections dispersed to other departments. Islamic objects were absorbed into the Department of Oriental Art, while Egyptian and classical objects became part of the Department of Egyptian and Classical Art. The department was renamed the Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art (ECAMEA) in 1982.

In the early 1980s, additions to ECAMEA’s holdings included an Egyptian stela from Dynasty 18, a Ramesside sarcophagus, an early Iranian painted pottery vessel, and a Nabatean bust of a goddess. A small gallery was created for temporary exhibitions, beginning with Wilbour in Egypt (1983), which commemorated the sesquicentennial of the birth of Charles Edwin Wilbour. In 1985 the curators began work on Cleopatra’s Egypt, a major exhibition on Ptolemaic Egypt that opened three years later. It was the first major international loan exhibition to concentrate on the art of the Ptolemaic Period and included 166 objects from 43 lenders throughout America and Europe. Another department project in the 1980s included the refurbishment of the Hagop Kevorkian Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art.

The department produced many publications at this time, including Ancient Greek and Roman Gold Jewelry in The Brooklyn Museum (Wilbour Monograph VIII, 1984) by Patricia Davidson and Andrew Oliver, Jr., and Predynastic and Archaic Egypt in The Brooklyn Museum (Wilbour Monograph IX, 1984) by Winifred Needler. In the spring of 1989 the Museum published Ancient Egyptian Art in The Brooklyn Museum by Richard Fazzini, Robert Bianchi, James Romano, and Donald Spanel, which included descriptions and essays on one hundred of the department’s finest objects.

In recent years, the department has dedicated more resources to preserving objects already in the collection, to “resurrecting” objects from storage to be put on view, and to ongoing reinstallations of the Egyptian galleries. In 1993 the west wing Egyptian galleries were renovated and reinstalled. The Hagop Kevorkian Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art was reinstalled in 2002, and, in 2003, curator James F. Romano oversaw Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, the second and final phase of the reinstallation of objects in the refurbished Egyptian galleries.