The Nasher Museum of Art

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University was founded as the Duke University Museum of Art (DUMA) in 1969 with the purchase of the Brummer Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Art. The museum holds more than 13,000 works of art, including the Brummer Collection of medieval and renaissance art, the George Harley Memorial Collection of African art, a collection of classical Greek and Roman antiquities and more than 3,000 works of ancient American art.

The musuem's current collecting focus is on its growing collection of contemporary art.

The Holy Land, as the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, has long fascinated people around the world. Many of the revered sites from religious scriptural traditions - Sinai, Nazareth, Jericho, Bethlehem and of course, Jerusalem - have become an integral part of cultural as well as political identities.

David Roberts (1796-1864) of Scotland was one of the first major European artists to travel in the Middle East, sketching its landscapes and religious sites. He arrived in 1838, after the region had been reopened by Napoleon's expeditions. He traveled from the Sinai peninsula northward to the ancient ruins of Baalbec, in what is now modern-day Lebanon. Enduring the rigors of the land and the climate, Roberts recorded the historical sites along his route, producing hundreds of drawings with notes on light, color, local customs and dress. After Roberts returned to London, his sketches, now mostly lost, became the basis for 125 color lithographs by the printmaker Louis Haghe (1806-1885). They were published from 1842-1844 as "The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia," giving the general public its first glimpse of the biblical landscape and monuments previously known only by verbal descriptions. The publication enjoyed immense popularity in Europe and the United States.

This year the Nasher Museum will present two installations from its collection of the complete lithographs after David Roberts' images of the Middle East. The first selection of 25 prints in summer 2009 will present a general survey of Roberts' journey and some of the major sites he visited. The second installation in fall 2009 will showcase a selection of the prints made by professors Eric Meyers and Carol Meyers of Duke's Divinity School, and professor Annabel Wharton of the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, to complement their fall 2009 academic programs.

A fully illustrated catalogue of the complete set of these lithographs is available in the Nasher Museum Store.

The Nasher Museum of Art acknowledges the support of Anita and John A. Schwarz, III, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Major, Bobbie and Michael Wilsey, and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation for the acquisition of the David Roberts prints in 1996.

Nasher Museum exhibitions and programs are generously supported by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Mary D.B.T. Semans and the late James H. Semans, The Duke Endowment, the Nancy Hanks Endowment, the K. Brantley and Maxine E. Watson Endowment Fund, the James Hustead Semans Memorial Fund, the Marilyn M. Arthur Fund, the Victor and Lenore Behar Endowment Fund, the George W. and Viola Mitchell Fearnside Endowment Fund, the Sarah Schroth Fund, the Margaret Elizabeth Collett Fund, North Carolina Arts Council, the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost, Duke University, and the Friends of the Nasher Museum of Art.

IMAGE: David Roberts, "Jerusalem, Church of the Purification," 1842-1844. Color lithograph. Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

The Past is Present: Classical Antiquities at the Nasher Museum Sixty works of art from the ancient Mediterranean world are on view, many of them for the first time, in the exhibition "The Past is Present: Classical Antiquities at the Nasher Museum." The works, ranging in date from about 2800 BCE to 300 CE, are part of a recent gift to the Nasher Museum from a private collection.

The exhibition includes examples of vase painting, marble and terracotta sculpture, bronze, carved amber and gold jewelry from the Cycladic era (third millennium BCE) through the late Hellenistic period.

The gift, given by an anonymous donor in 2006, contains pieces from a private collection assembled between the 1920s and the early 1970s. The show also includes ancient works from the Duke Classical Collection and the Nasher Museum's collection.

One of the recently acquired works in the exhibition is a vase from about 520-510 BCE, "Attic black-figure neck-amphora with Europa and the Bull," depicting an ancient Greek myth. The vase was found at Vulci in Etruria (Italy) more than 200 years ago and had been part of the collection of Lucien Bonaparte and the Duke of Buckingham.

Another work, "Gold Disc with Bees," was worn, possibly as a pendant, in the ancient Greek world almost 3,000 years ago. The detailed workmanship of the piece -- decorated with four honeybees clustered around a flower -- shows the influence of art of the ancient Near East (today's Middle East) that spread across much of the ancient eastern Mediterranean in the 7th century BCE.

The installation was organized by Carla Antonaccio, professor of archeology in Duke's Department of Classical Studies, and Sheila Dillon, the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke.

They present the exhibition through six themes: "The Bronze Age: before 'Greece'" (circa 3300 to 1100 BCE); "The Bronze Age without End" (circa 1100 to 700 BCE); "Women, Beauty and Adornment"; "Death and the Funeral"; "The Gods and Sacrifice"; and "The Greek Mixer: Symposia and Drinking Games."

An important aspect of the exhibition is researching, documenting and publishing the collection. Professors Antonaccio and Dillon team-teach a Duke class at the Nasher Museum; their students will take part in cataloging the new antiquities gift. Anne Schroder, the museum's curator of academic programs, is the coordinating curator for the exhibition.

As part of its mission, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University conducts and publishes research on the artworks in its collections. One important component of that research is the documentation of a work's provenance, or previous history of ownership before it was acquired by the museum, as can be determined through surviving records, physical evidence, and additional enquiry.

In December 1999 the American Association of Museums issued its Guidelines Concerning the Unlawful Appropriation of Objects During the Nazi Era, asking museums to identify works in their collections having incomplete provenances for the period 1933 to 1945. The Nasher Museum of Art participates in the provenance website coordinated by the American Association of Museum, i.e., NEPIP.org (for the Nazi-Era Provenance Information Portal). The Nasher Museum also subscribes to the Art Loss Register and is uploading to that website (www.artloss.com) antiquities which came into the museum's collection after 1970 without provenance history as well as works in the museum's collections for which incomplete provenance is known during the Nazi Era (1933-1945).

It is important to note that such gaps of information in an artwork's provenance indicate that further research is needed to complete the history of ownership for each item, and does not in itself constitute evidence of such works having been improperly looted form archeological sites or seized by the Nazis from victims of the Holocaust. Indeed, it is often the case that records do not survive from half a century ago, especially for artworks sold by private individuals, unless the buyer was able to obtain such documentation at the time of purchase. As research continues and provenances are confirmed, items will be removed from the list when their ownership history is no longer incomplete for this period.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University welcomes any information that the public has on the ownership history of works in its collections. For further assistance, please contact: Anne Schroder, Curator and Academic Program Coordinator (anne.schroder@duke.edu).