Papers by Josephine Shaya
American Journal of Archaeology, 2021
On the first Monday of every month, the American Journal of Archaeology publishes online a list o... more On the first Monday of every month, the American Journal of Archaeology publishes online a list of current and upcoming exhibitions related to topics within the scope of the journal (www.ajaonline.org/exhibits). Our original idea for the list was simple: to be aware of what's going on in recent exhibitions related to the subject areas of the AJA. It would provide information about exhibitions around the world, including their translated titles, dates, locations, curators, information about catalogues, and links to museum websites. We first published the list in December 2017. In September 2018, we started to include new museums and permanent gallery installations. The list has become more robust over time. The first installment included 46 exhibitions; as of December 2020, the list, current and archived, totals 875 exhibitions, reinstallations, and new museums. All are archived on AJA Online. 1 The list is by no means exhaustive, but we have aimed to capture as many exhibitions that touch on the ancient Mediterranean and Near East as possible. We gather the exhibitions through a search of museum websites and by word of mouth; we miss some due to the limits of our knowledge and expertise. Nonetheless, the list offers a large sample of exhibitions put on by institutions of different shapes, sizes, histories, localities, and missions. It is a useful tool; it collects information about what is going on, where, when, and in what kinds of institutions. It serves people looking, in the moment, for current exhibitions and creates a record that allows researchers to assess larger trends. The list can even inform us about topics and trends in the exhibition of Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquities. 2 1 I am grateful to Churou Chen, Amina Hull, Zineb Sair, and Estelle Shaya who have helped me compile the list and analyze it. I am also grateful to Amélie Walker-Yung for formatting and publishing the list every month and to The College of Wooster for supporting my research. I give many thanks to Editor-in-Chief
American Journal of Archaeology, 2018
Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, 2015
While the Romans did not have museums, practices of collecting and display were fully developed i... more While the Romans did not have museums, practices of collecting and display were fully developed in Rome. Romans used collections of objects to substantiate, reinforce, and broadcast particular views of the world. This chapter shows how current work in museum studies opens new avenues of research into Roman art. It draws on recent scholarship on collecting that explores debates over cultural property, questions of viewing, and the role of collections in the construction of personal and imperial identities. It is herewith the appropriation of patrimony, with the creation of art, and with ideas of a universal artistic heritage-that we find ancient analogs of modern museums.
The academic literature on monuments has boomed in the last 30 years. Together with museums, tour... more The academic literature on monuments has boomed in the last 30 years. Together with museums, tourist sites, and community rituals, monuments play a key role in the construction of the past. This article examines how monuments worked in the Roman world. It considers one monument as a case in point-the collection of summi viri that lined the porticoes in the Forum of Augustusexamining it in light of recent scholarship on monuments and historical commemoration. The story of the summi viri collection cannot be separated from its public life. Many have presented the summi viri and indeed the entire forum as an ideological production. That fits a reading of the monument itself, but the collection was not a static record of Rome's past. Rather, if we look at its public life, especially the ways in which it was viewed and reproduced, we see that its meanings were much more dynamic.* monuments and memory
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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Book Reviews by Josephine Shaya
American Journal of Archaeology, 2018
The April 2017 AJA carried a review of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España in Madrid (MAN).... more The April 2017 AJA carried a review of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España in Madrid (MAN). That review requires an addendum. A full account of the new installation of MAN’s collection must acknowledge the display of some recently acquired antiquities with unknown provenance and dubious history.
American Journal of Archaeology, 2017
Archaeology museums are one of the most important ways that our field communicates its findings t... more Archaeology museums are one of the most important ways that our field communicates its findings to the wider public. 1 The work of archaeology museums, however, is by no means simple. Archaeologists, curators, and museum directors have grappled with recent debates focusing on the politics of display, the cult of the masterpiece, the appeal to multiple publics, and the acquisition and ownership of cultural property. 2 This is an exciting and fraught time for archaeological collections. It is in this context that we should look to the recent renovation of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España (MAN) in Madrid. The new installation , opened to the public in April 2014, addresses many current issues in the field in meaningful ways: it aims for universal accessibility; it embraces technology; it values the effective communication of archaeological findings to a wide audience; it emphasizes the fundamental importance of archaeological and historical context; and it historicizes the museum itself. Potential dangers lurk in the choices that guided MAN's renovation. Appeals to a broad audience, for instance, can lead to the watering down of scholarly rigor, the Disneyfication of the past, the valorization of attention-grabbing technologies over the objects themselves, and the heavy-handed intrusion of the curator onto the viewer's experience. While these threats exist, they are not in evidence at MAN. The new installation offers an importantand what is likely to be influentialmodel for the exhibition of archaeological collections. MAN holds one of the outstanding archaeological collections in Europe. Its origins lie in the 19th-century European creation of national museums. It was founded in 1867 by Queen Isabella II (1830-1904) with the aim of documenting the entire history of Spain and offering an overview of ancient civilizations. Originally, MAN brought together material from three different institutionsthe Museum of Medals and Antiquities at the National 1 The reviewer would like to thank Andrés Carretero Pérez, director of the Museo Ar-queológico Nacional, who kindly provided much information about the renovation project. Thanks also to Elaine Gazda, for sharing her knowledge about many recent museum renovations, and to Yolanda García. Additional figures can be found under this article's abstract on AJA Online (www.ajaonline.org).
This interdisciplinary collection of essays tackles the complicated and significant role of trave... more This interdisciplinary collection of essays tackles the complicated and significant role of travel and movement in ancient Mediterranean religions. Its chapters address issues of pilgrimage, travel narratives, ethnography, migration and occupational travel through the examination of literary, epigraphic, papyrological and archaeological sources. Focusing primarily on the eastern Mediterranean, it explores travel in the religious lives of ancient Mesopotamians, Judeans, Greeks, Romans, Nabateans, and Christians. Its chronological, geographic and methodological range is impressive and the chapters only grow stronger when seen in dialogue with one another.
Shaky Ground arose out of Marlowe's teaching, in particular from the discrepancy she experienced ... more Shaky Ground arose out of Marlowe's teaching, in particular from the discrepancy she experienced between her lowerlevel Roman art survey and her upper-level seminar on looting, faking, and collecting antiquities. While students in her survey learned about Roman art through its canonical works, many of which (somewhere between one third to one half of freestanding sculpture in leading Roman art textbooks) have no reliable data about their ancient settings, those in her seminar quickly realized the degree to which a statue's historical interpretation depends on knowledge of its ancient context. During the semester, Marlowe writes, the epistemological contradictions between her two classes became impossible to ignore.
Debates over cultural patrimony and the ownership of ancient art make headlines today. Margaret M... more Debates over cultural patrimony and the ownership of ancient art make headlines today. Margaret Milesʼs Art as Plunder reminds readers that this was also the case in late Republican Rome. Her book promises to explore "the origins of art as cultural property and the competing claims that arise when it is seized, appropriated, and collected by a stronger authority" (1). Miles investigates ancient attitudes and expectations about loot, ranging from the Sumerian period to the early Byzantine era, with special attention to those articulated by Cicero in his Verrine orations. But thatʼs not all. Turning to the modern reception of the Verrines, Miles argues that Ciceroʼs ideas about the ownership and proper use of art were a touchstone for late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century European debates about the expropriation of art, and thereby contributed to the creation of the twentieth-century concept of cultural property.
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Papers by Josephine Shaya
Book Reviews by Josephine Shaya