Foreword

Vogel, Susan Mullin

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Foreword

Susan Mullin Vogel

I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome

It is with a special sense of pride and the greatest enthusiasm that the Yale University Art Gallery presents I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome. This major’loan exhibition, the Gallery’s first in this field, brings some of the most important works of Roman art in North America together for the first time. As we see these magnificent images of...

Author

Susan Mullin Vogel

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31687

Foreword

It is with a special sense of pride and the greatest enthusiasm that the Yale University Art Gallery presents I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome. This major loan exhibition, the Gallery’s first in this field, brings some of the most important works of Roman art in North America together for the first time. As we see these magnificent images of women of all ages and social classes, we see both the power and the vulnerability of Roman women, both the way they shaped their society and the way in which they were molded by it. As we see the portraits of their husbands, fathers, and children, we are reminded of the universality and timelessness of family experience. The spaces in which Roman women lived, evoked in the architecture and gardens of the exhibition, and the jewelry, religious images, and legal documents that formed part of their daily lives, allow us to experience what it was like to be a woman in ancient Rome.

The art of Greece, Rome, and the ancient Near East has long been a major part of the Art Gallery’s collection, much as the art, literature, and history of the ancient Mediterranean has always been a focus of teaching at Yale. Yale’s first antiquities were the monumental Assyrian stone reliefs from the Palace of Assurnasirpal II acquired in 1854, followed in the 1930s by finds from the Yale-French excavations at Dura-Europos in Syria. These collections and the continuing acquisition through gift and purchase of major collections and works of Greek and Roman Art have reflected an interest not only in the aesthetic object but in the social and historical context of ancient art shared by the Gallery and the faculty. It is thus fitting that this collaborative exhibition should focus on the social and historical forces that produced vivid images of women in Roman art and on the context in which these images were seen and used. Furthermore, it is natural that this exhibition should result from a collaboration between the Gallery’s curator of ancient art, the university’s senior professor of Roman art, and many of their present and former graduate students.

On behalf of the Yale University Art Gallery staff and Governing Board, I want to express my sincere thanks to Diana E. E. Kleiner, Deputy Provost for the Arts and Dunham Professor of Classics and the History of Art, and Susan B. Matheson, the Gallery’s Curator of Ancient Art, for conceiving and curating this beautiful and stimulating exhibition and for producing this catalogue. It offers precisely the pleasure for the eye and the sustenance for the mind that the Gallery aspires to give our public. To all of the lenders, both private and institutional, I offer the Gallery’s thanks for their generous and enthusiastic support of the project. We are grateful to Douglas K. S. Hyland, Director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, and Lawrence W. Wheeler, Director of the North Carolina Museum of Art, for sponsoring the exhibition at their museums. It is a privilege to acknowledge the essential financial support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Together with the dedicated staff of the Gallery, they have created this compelling salute to the women of Rome.

Susan Vogel

The Henry J. Heinz II Director

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