Friday, March 25, 2011

Review of Dura Europos exhibit at McMullen Museum

ANOTHER REVIEW of the Dura-Europos exhibition in Boston:
Ancient city’s diversity on display
‘Crossroads’ exhibit offers holistic look at military, religious, and other artifacts


By Sebastian Smee (Boston Globe)

[...]

It’s not hard to see, then, why scholars specializing in Jewish studies, early Christian studies, or ancient civilizations were agog, and why the scholarship sprouting from the discovery of Dura-Europos tended to divide and splinter into these specialist areas.

“Dura-Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity,’’ a fascinating exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, is an attempt to glue all this scholarship together. The show, organized by Yale University’s Lisa Brody and Boston College’s Gail Hoffman, is an attempt to display the full spectrum of archeologists’ discoveries at Dura-Europos, from military shields to children’s shoes, and from engagement rings to divorce decrees.

[...]
Background here.