Art Institute of Chicago lets TOC tour Jaharis Galleries | slideshow

Jaharis Galleries at the Art Institute

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  Ceramic amphora (provision jar) with volute handles. 4th century B.C. Greek.

  "Ancient art [was among] the first pieces collected for the museum," Nielsen says. "Some of the great founding families of Chicago collected Greek red-figure and black-figure vases. They would have those alongside their Monets…. To show that you were a cultured and educated person in the 1890s, you needed some antiquities."

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis09.jpg158515811
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  Bronze mirror with a handle in the form of a female figure, c. 3rd century B.C. Etruscan.

  "The Etruscans lived in Italy as the Romans began to come to power," Manchester explains. "They really liked Greek art, and they imported it and imitated it." Manchester says this mirror would once have had a highly polished reflective surface. She particularly admires the graceful sculpture of a woman that forms its handle: "Isn’t that just so elegant, the way she stands?"

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis11.jpg158515912
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  Marble bust of Athena, c. 2nd century A.D. Roman.

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis12.jpg158515963
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  Busts of Silenus, 1st century B.C.–1st century A.D. Roman.

  Once attached to furniture, these are "two very important bronzes," according to Manchester. "They represent followers of the wine god Dionysus. We’ve never been able to display them this close, so people could actually see they have silver eyes and teeth and that their lips were inlaid with copper at one point. They’re stunning in terms of their technical virtuosity."

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis01.jpg158515414
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  Fragments of luxury glass, 1st century B.C.–1st century A.D. Roman.

  "The Romans excelled in the production of luxury glass and there are very few surviving examples of it," says Manchester. "We have a lot of fragments and we’ve been struggling with how to show them." Lit from behind, this display makes the glass fragments glow like jewels.

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis02.jpg158515465
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  Marble bust of a Flavian woman, late 1st century A.D. Roman.

  "Pretty cool hair," Manchester says with a laugh as we pass this sculpture. While its subject remains unidentified, scholars know when she lived "because people always emulated imperial fashion," Manchester explains. "Presumably, because she had the resources to have her portrait carved in very fine marble, and it’s a very good portrait, she must have been somebody with means."

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis08.jpg158515766
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  Marble portrait bust of a woman, Antonine Period, 140–150 A.D. Roman.

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis06.jpg158515667
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  Marble head of a barbarian, early 2nd century A.D. Roman.

  "We wanted to emphasize that the Roman Empire wasn’t all about Romans," Manchester says. "You had barbarians and you had Africans. The Roman Empire was enormous and so all sorts of people were pouring into Rome, and many of them had the opportunity to make their fortunes."

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis07.jpg158515718
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  Mosaic pavement fragments depicting a brazier, an almond cake and a bound rooster, 2nd century A.D. Roman.

  Discovered in 1823, these mosaics wouldn't look out of place in a contemporary kitchen. "These were part of a pavement that was in somebody’s dining area,“ Manchester says.

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis05.jpg158515619
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  Mosaic fragment with grazing camel, 400–500 A.D. Byzantine, eastern Mediterranean (probably Syria).

  This is one of several animal mosaics on display. (My favorite depicts a baby giraffe and its handler.) "We almost have a menagerie," Nielsen says, adding that exotic animals were popular status symbols in the Byzantine Empire.

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis04.jpg1585155610
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  Gold bracelet with the Three Hebrews, 500–600 A.D. Byzantine, Anatolia (modern Turkey).

  Photo: Max Herman403.ac.ar.Jaharis03.jpg1585155111

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Ceramic amphora (provision jar) with volute handles. 4th century B.C. Greek.

"Ancient art [was among] the first pieces collected for the museum," Nielsen says. "Some of the great founding families of Chicago collected Greek red-figure and black-figure vases. They would have those alongside their Monets…. To show that you were a cultured and educated person in the 1890s, you needed some antiquities."

Photo: Max Herman

When the Art Institute of Chicago opens its new Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries to the public Sunday 11, visitors will discover that the museum's exhibition space for Greek, Roman and Byzantine art has more than tripled in size, to more than 13,700 square feet. On Tuesday, I toured the first-floor galleries, which encircle the museum's McKinlock Court, with the Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art's Karen Manchester, chair and curator of Ancient Art; and Christine Nielsen, assistant curator for Late Antique, Early Christian and Byzantine Art. Read more about the visit in our slideshow, above, and after the jump.

Manchester is glad the Jaharis Galleries occupy a "crossroads" within the Art Institute, between the museum's Indian art, its American fine and decorative art, the Modern Wing and Louis Sullivan's Stock Exchange Trading Room. "We are right in the center of all of these collections that were inspired or influenced in some way by ancient art," she says. "Our founding fathers decided to use the classical idiom in the architecture of this country….The Stock Exchange room was influenced by Byzantine art." Picasso owned a Cycladic sculpture from Greece that's similar to the one greeting visitors at the entrance to the Jaharis Galleries. 

In "Of Gods and Glamor," the Jaharis Galleries' first exhibition, approximately 400 objects from the museum's permanent collection mingle with more than 150 examples of mosaics, sculpture, painting, glass, silver and jewelry on loan from institutions such as the Smart Museum and the Field Museum, as well as private collections. The display proceeds chronologically from Greece to Rome to Byzantium, emphasizing the gradual evolution of ancient art and the diverse influences of the Roman and Byzantine Empires' multiethnic populations. One section of the galleries is devoted to "Late Roman and Early Byzantine Treasures from the British Museum," on view through August 25; many of its 51 works have never before traveled to the U.S.

Both shows celebrate domestic bling, from beautiful glass cosmetics containers to a Roman noblewoman's gilded silver chest for bathing accessories—in part because of the strengths of the museum's collection, Nielsen says. "We’re trying to show that people in the ancient world lived lives very much like ours," the curator adds. "Women cared about their hair. They cared about makeup. People cared about what their homes were decorated like." The Jaharis Galleries' Byzantine art was created between approximately 300–700 A.D., an era once characterized as the Dark Ages, she explains. "But it was a transformative period that sets up the art of Europe for the next thousand years….There’s still a great deal of resonance today that contemporary artists can mine for inspiration. The cultures aren't dead; they're living in new ways."

Manchester speaks about the Jaharis Galleries at the Art Institute November 15, 6–7pm. Free with museum admission.