THE HADRIAN EXHIBITION is reviewed by Elizabeth Speller in the New Statesman. Excerpt:

Not everyone requires an official narrative, of course. Reviewers sometimes have the opportunity to see an exhibition outside opening hours, and for sensuous pleasure such intimate viewing is an unmatched experience. An exhibition, however, is primarily not a spectacle, but a conduit of information, and watching visitors respond to the displays is informative in itself. The densest bottleneck is around finds from a cave in Israel where Jewish rebels and their families attempted (unsuccessfully) to evade the Roman soldiers. The exhibits are beautifully preserved and mostly very simple: footwear, a straw basket, house keys, letters and a mirror. Almost all are objects familiar from our own lives and resonate with images we know from the aftermath of violent conflict today - and they prove that it is not just precious metal, marble and superb craftsmanship which draw the crowds or re-create the past.

Why Hadrian? He was intelligent, restless and controlling, his political skills consolidated the empire, his aesthetic agenda transformed the city of Rome, and his suppression of Judaea was to store up problems for posterity, but Hadrian was not so much an exceptional emperor as a very good exemplar, not least because such a breadth of material survives him. But ultimately, in common with the major exhibition that preceded it, "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army", and almost certainly "Babylon", planned for November, this is an exploration of power. Specifically, of absolute power, and how it can marshal unimaginable resources to shape a world.

Background here.