Greek and Roman Art

The museum’s collection of Greek and Roman Art comprises over 6,500 Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Cypriot, and Bronze Age Aegean artifacts. From monumental public sculpture to small-scale items of personal adornment, and from drinking vessels to burial containers, objects on display in the permanent collection galleries demonstrate the rich and varied material cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, offering insight into diverse aspects of daily life, and illustrating processes of contact, conflict, and creative exchange across peoples and time. Highlights include an Attic red-figured calyx krater attributed to the Dinos Painter, depicting the death of Actaeon; a colossal portrait head of the emperor Tiberius; and a cameo with a portrait of the empress Faustina, formerly in the collection of George Spencer, Fourth Duke of Marlborough (1739-1817).

The collection was formed following a substantial donation of Roman coins from Emory alumnus, Reverend Wilbur Fisk Glenn, in the late 1920s and expanded piecemeal through the 1960s. Beginning in 1981, the generous financial support and long-term commitment of Thalia and Michael C. Carlos ensured its development as one of the most significant collections of Greek and Roman art in the Southeast. It has been further augmented by important donations of objects from the Brummer Collection, donations of Greek pottery from Dietrich von Bothmer, and the long-term loan of classical plaster casts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The collection also houses the photographic archive of archaeologist Conrad M. Stibbe (1925-2019). In accordance with the museum’s commitment to the Association of Art Museum Directors’ Guidelines on the Acquisition of Archaeological Materials and Ancient Art, research into the previous ownership histories of objects in the Collection of Greek and Roman Art is active and ongoing.