New Oriental Institute exhibition | Best thing I did this week

This week, I did a few noteworthy things, including see the new crop of shows at the Hyde Park Art Center and learn about the autopsy process (strange, yes—more on that in next week's magazine). But a visit to Hyde Park's Oriental Institute's new exhibit takes the cake (along with a stop for yummy, excessively buttery ham-and-cheese croissants at nearby Medici Bakery. Drooling just thinking about it).

Last Monday, I headed down to the museum for a sneak peek of its current exhibition, “Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East." (FYI, this article looks and reads much better in print.) It features illustrations created by Oriental Institute Egyptologists, some of whom fictionalized the occasional detail. For example: The 1920s photos that caused a frenzy over King Tut's tomb appear to be lit by immaculately staged electric lighting in order to create the perception that the tomb had been untouched. 

Curator Emily Teeter, always overflowing with interesting behind-the-scenes information, talked me through the nearly finished exhibit while a couple of insightful installers piped up.

A few interesting things I didn't point out in my article: There's a strip of declassified American spy film (taken from a satellite or possibly an airplane) featuring a small sliver of the Middle East; you can take a lens and inspect ancient sites. One section in the exhibit shows the "Chicago Method," the photography and drawing system Oriental Institute's founder, Henry Breasted, employed to create highly accurate images.

How do we know what's accurate and what's not, and can accuracy really ever be achieved? How does inaccuracy predjudice our perceptions of things, and when is inaccuracy a worthwhile result of creative thinking? Although most of the illustrations hailed from 1930s, the exhibit brings up some of the same questions posed about the Internet. That sounds like this is a timely exhibit. Not especially. According to Teeter, she's more interested in displaying some of the beautiful early-20th century drawings and paintings—important historical documents in their own right. 

"Picturing the Past" runs though September 2 at the Oriental Institute.