Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Ever since Indiana Jones began his pulpy adventure series into far-flung and exotic locations, the discovery of artifacts has gone from a virtually unheard of profession to a glamorous one, seemingly designed for a dichotomous group of swashbuckling rogues and charming intellectuals.  Archaeology has evolved (much like its subjects) from the cavalier work of aristocratic colonialists like Lord Elgin and Captain Cook to a field far more accessible to the public.  Some of said discoveries may even take place in, wonder of wonders, Indiana.  Mine was free of cannibalism and international conflict, but not, I promise, free of intrigue.

Now, Dear Reader, you can by a mere flick of the clicking finger discover what we’ve discovered at the IMA, which, I think, is pretty rad in the stealthy world of museum administration.  Most recently, what we’ve unearthed is not from Jaipur or Nimrud, but from an apparently long-forgotten box on a shelf.  But sometimes it happens that real life discoveries are just as romantic as those of Dr. Jones’s folklore.

The “what” is actually a “who”- a Roman terracotta portrait bust of a young woman, probably from the first century C.E.  For now, she remains mysterious.  I discovered her by chance (luck, fate?) while foraging the museum’s endless object storage cabinets, recognizing first the elaborate hairstyle worn by the women of ancient Rome.  There she was, gleaming out from an old box, still perfectly coiffed after two thousand years.  And there too I was, smudgy and not so well-coiffed.

She was a gift of Hoosier author Booth Tarkington, notorious loather of modern art.  To unearth such a piece is thrilling, but at the same time a little saddening, because there is very little chance of learning its origins prior to its donation in 1951.  So far we have a few promising leads, which point to some prominent New York auction houses.

Of course every museum has a cavernous storeroom full of more than 90% of its objects, many as yet unseen by the public eye, or at least unremembered.  Rarely, though, do we discover something of significance, something as skillfully-wrought and captivating as this portrait, and terracotta statues are fragile, so they do not often survive in good condition.  The reemergence of works like this one elucidates two separate histories: one which tells a story about the object’s own cultural past, but also another about the history of the museum itself.  If you ask me, the romance is in the union of those two stories, in how a private Roman woman, who was not famous in her lifetime, came to be art in Indianapolis, Indiana.

So, you ask, what’s on the agenda for this bi-millennial beauty?  We’re interested in dating her as accurately as possible, for which she will visit the conservation department of the museum.  Roman portraits are interesting because they can help us understand how the Romans thought of themselves and what values or “trends,” if you will, existed at the time.  I am looking forward to sharing our research, and, hopefully, to setting her up for others to admire.

And so as we delve into the mystery of our bella donna Romana, I invite you to stay tuned for more details.

• Tags: art blog, booth tarkington, bust, Conservation, head, ima, indiana jones, Indianapolis Museum of Art, roman, rome, terracotta
 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 9:08 am and is filed under Art, Conservation, Guest Bloggers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.