Volume 46, Number 10 · June 10, 1999
Athens on Fifth Avenue
By Garry Wills
'This is not just a spiffing up of the galleries,' said Philippe de Montebello as he showed me around the renovated classical Greek section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. De Montebello, the director of the Met, was about to leave for Athens, where he would describe the new Greek exhibit to the Ministry of Culture and invite the prime minister to attend the opening on April 20. 'This is a way of rethinking the entire Greek heritage,' he continued. 'It amounts to the appearance of a whole new museum in New York.' The refurbishing of the galleries that contain the Met's classical collection is a major phase in the museum's re-presentation of Western antiquity (from the prehistoric through the Hellenistic and Roman eras). In the spacious new arrangements of vitrines and pedestals and wall cases, the objects are mounted, lit, labeled in such a way that artifact speaks to artifact, each work explaining and explained by its neighbors—in terms of time, style, subject matter, culture, region, medium.
Feature, 3797 words
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