Sustainable Seeing:

A Veiled Dialogue of Past and Present Among the Marbles of the

Metropolitan Museum

Abigail Davis

Special Honors in the Department of Art History

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2020

______________________________

Nassos Papalexandrou, Ph.D.

Department of Art and Art History

Supervising Professor

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT III

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IV

INTRODUCTION 6

CHAPTER ONE: A ROLE IN STONE 12

CHAPTER TWO: HEADS WILL ROLL 23

CHAPTER THREE: AMONG GODDESSES AND GUCCI 40

CHAPTER FOUR: MARBLE DOLL 49

CONCLUSION 60

FIGURES 62

BIBLIOGRAPHY 104

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Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art displays Late Classical work Marble statue of a

woman in praise of the work’s classical form and divine subject matter. This freestanding

sculpture presents an ever-shifting identity dependent upon the spectator and the viewing

context, which suggests that viewers project the social and cultural values of their context onto

the statue as a means of deriving significance from their interaction with the work. If the context

of looking veils centuries of spectators’ vision of the Met statue consistently, then we may

conclude the work actively functions as an adaptive device as a means to maintain relevance to

the ones who gaze upon the stone.

Sustainable Seeing assesses the treatment, reception, and viewing contexts of the

Metropolitan Museum’s statue in four chapters. Chapter One: A Role in Stone discusses the

probable identity and intended function of the statue in classical Athens and the issues that arise

when labeling the figure definitively. Personification reveals itself as the most probable mode of

ancient existence initially intended for the Met statue’s role. However, the identity of that

personification remains elusively hidden behind a smokescreen of loosely supported visual

evidence and mythological associations shrouded by history’s tendency to obscure.

Chapter Two: Heads Will Roll divulges the statue’s reception and treatment before and

during the Metropolitan’s acquisition in 1903. The figure belonged to the expansive seventeenth

century art collection in Rome of aristocratic Italian banker Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani

(1564-1637), where it received extensive restoration to complete its fragmented physique. The

Metropolitan removed these seventeenth-century restorations from the statue upon acquisition,

and the current location of those restorations is uncertain. Upon further investigation into the

restoration practices of the seventeenth century and the Metropolitan’s archives, we find that the

line between artistic or archaeological intervention in the name of preservation or desired

aesthetics is a product of its time.

Chapter Three: Among Goddesses and Gucci focuses on the statue’s dance among the

stars of the silver screen during its inclusion in the 2003 Met Gala and exhibition Goddess.

Because the past is more palatable when reheated with fame’s false reality, ancient marble

becomes glamorous by association. Chapter Four: Marble Doll, the final chapter, presents

various interactions with the statue during the museum’s closure due to the global pandemic of

2020. For many, looking at art from home offered more insight and authentic engagement than a

museum setting. Spectators filled the distance between themselves and the Met statue through

intimate interactions and artistic interpretations filled with the same level of improvisation as

2020.

Within these chapters of research, we uncover how the cultural and social values and

individual experiences of each viewer and viewing context direct the statue’s treatment as a work

of art while forming the lens through which the beholder derives meaning and significance.

Situational commentary constitutes the argument that it is the dialogue we create when we

interact with art of the past that sustains a meaningful engagement and thoughtful participation

with history.

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Acknowledgments

I must share my deepest gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Nassos Papalexandrou, whose

guidance has been the most consistent source of inspiring challenges, thoughtful feedback, and

an unmatched sense of optimism throughout this research. From my first class at the University

of Texas in Dr. Papalexandrou’s art history survey course to my completion of this research

under his supervision, I have found that his positive impact on students significantly dwells in his

passion for the material. Dr. Papalexandrou’s understanding of the necessity to find excitement

in what you study gave me the freedom to modify my research until I found honest delight in my

subject. Experiencing genuine enthusiasm in this process was a top priority since I decided to

write this thesis in 2017. I am grateful to have worked with an advisor who understood and

shared this goal. Thank you, Dr. Papalexandrou, for your enlightening direction and tremendous

patience, without which I could not have made that goal this reality. Your wisdom and positivity

have been most valuable and appreciated throughout this entire process.

I also cannot express how utterly thankful I am for Dr. Ann C. Johns. Without Dr. Johns,

these past four years would not have given me the same quality of opportunities, friendships,

confidence, and some of my most adored memories, many of which have genuinely defined and

solidified my relationship with art history. Dr. Johns is the most encouraging and

accommodating scholar any institution could ever be fortunate enough to have educate students.

Dr. Johns, from studying in Italy to completing this thesis, your patience and understanding

when confronted with my procrastination and customized deadlines continuously amazed me. I

am certain I could not have done this without you, for even this research began in one of your

courses. Thank you for your warmth, your humor, and always being there for me. I am grateful

to have you as a mentor, professor, and friend.

I want to thank my family, especially my parents, for all their love and support, their faith

in my work, and for never once doubting the utility or validity of a degree in the arts. I want to

express my gratitude and appreciation to artist and dear friend Hannah van Meter for her sharp

observations, sincere enthusiasm, and never sugarcoating her thoughts. A heartfelt thanks to all

my incredible friends and colleagues: Amy Anderson, Gordito, Alyssa Miller, Mackenzie

Nissen, and Nikita Sveshnikov. Your advice, encouragement, and energy helped me find a

chromatic connection in this work.

I would also like to extend my most ardent thanks to all the impassioned art historians

and art educators that I have had the privilege to learn from and work with throughout my

studies: Dr. Michael Charlesworth, Dr. Penelope Davies, Lisa Davis, Ian Floyd, Dr. Jason A

Goldstein, Dr. Julia Guernsey, Marilyn Ivy, Dr. Janice Leoshko, Dr. Moyosore Okediji, Monique

O’Neil, Lynne Thurman, Dr. Louis Alexander Waldman, and Ray Williams. Through your

lecturing, gallery teaching, artmaking, or writing, you have all challenged me and inspired me far

more deeply than I can express. Many thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s responsivity

and helpfulness, even when the institution’s doors are closed due to the global pandemic. I am

ever appreciative of the resources available to me at the University of Texas at Austin. I came

across many treasures that enriched this research by browsing the stacks of the Fine Arts Library

and the Classics Library. The only other source I found to match these texts’ intellectual caliber

is the knowledge gained from my coursework in the Department of Art and Art History. I cannot

overestimate the advantages of being in a department of such well-respected academics with a

sincere concern with undergraduate education. It has been profoundly advantageous and a

privilege to be a part of a department that is an ever-expanding hub of scholarship and discovery.

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Lastly, I want to thank Artie, the only soul who truly knows precisely how much caffeine

and how little sleep resulted from this entire process.

The visible exists because it has already been seen.

John Berger

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Introduction

“In order to promote identification, museums promote interaction, a kind of dialogue

between visitor and exhibit identities.”1 In 1972, groups of students from the New York metro

area participated in experimental arts-education courses conducted by museum educators at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Documented in the Met’s film Arts Awareness, 1972, modern-day

viewers can observe, “Students engage with masterpieces in new and surprising ways, from

dancing beside Greek and Roman statuary to making music, movies, and art in the galleries.”2 In

this film, a group of students gathered in the gallery of Greek and Roman art (Figure 1), now

seemingly unrecognizable after the museum’s 2007 renovation. The students form a large circle

in the center of an unobstructed space with marble fragments lining a single corner, providing a

muted background confined by potted plants and stale wall paint. The art educator facilitating

their experience asks the students, “To try to capture in movement, the feeling of the

environment that you get from this room.”3 The facilitator punctuated her explanation of this

looking exercise by sticking out her tongue and rolling her eyes in acknowledgment of the

gallery’s drear-filled ambiance. Surrounded by a space that portrays ancient sculptures as

wallflowers, students attempted to summon life from marble through their individual

interactions. In an unimaginative room of audible stillness, an imaginative charade of interpretive

movement unfolded. At the base of an over-life-size form of a headless female statue that is the

focus of this research, two students imitate the fractured state of the works before them by

retracting their arms or head into their clothing (Figure 2 and Figure 3).

1 “Arts Awareness, 1972 | From the Vaults.” YouTube. Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2020.

M2etmuseum.org/150/from-the-vaults 2 Metropolitan Museum, “Arts Awareness, 1972 | From the Vaults.” 3 Metropolitan Museum, “Arts Awareness, 1972 | From the Vaults.”

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While potentially traumatizing to an introverted student, the purpose of this charismatic

performance and other experimental gallery activities documented in the film were to encourage

and promote viewer-object interaction among New York’s younger generations. Allowing young

visitors to create their own stories as a way to find meaning with works of art adheres to the

Met’s educationally charged mission. The art educators facilitating these courses stated, “We

discovered that art history was not the best handle by which to reach a kid.”4 I perceive this

statement not as a dismissal of art history’s educational value, but as an acknowledgment of the

limited framework in which we tend to view art from the past. Reducing art history to dates and

materials forces its physical remains into a passive role in a museum setting. However, it is in the

narrative that individual spectators generate through their own temporal vision that works of art

come to life and inhabit an active role in the viewing experience. “The time, and therefore the

story, belongs to them. Yet the meaning of the story, what makes it worthy of being told, is what

we can see and what inspires us because we are beyond its time.”5

1973 film from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s moving-image archive, Art in Public

Spaces, takes viewers on a reflective tour of public art in early 1970s New York City. Released

as part of the Met’s 150th anniversary in 2020, artist and writer Russel Connor comments: “It

seems funny to say it, but long before there was an art world, there was art in the world.”6 For

the large-scale sculpture students artfully moved before in Figures 2-3, Marble statue of a

woman (Figures 4-7), that world was the Late Classical period in ancient Greece, the 2nd half of

the fourth century B.C.

4 Metropolitan Museum, “Arts Awareness, 1972 | From the Vaults.” 5 John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, (New York City, NY: Pantheon

Books, 1984), 31. 6 Russel Connor, “Art in Public Places, 1973 | From the Vaults.” Filmed in 1974. Video, 28:19,

March 20, 2020. Metmuseum.org/150/from-the-vaults.

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It is a well-known truth that large encyclopedic museums like the Metropolitan are public

spaces. However, we must learn and gaze with caution as that space is a strategically curated

reality fit to a deceptive vision of the art world. The museum’s Greek and Roman galleries

present an “astonishing assembly of works” that bring to life “the visual and conceptual roots of

Western civilization.”7 The physical surroundings of this art world in which the statue resides

today are the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Greek and

Roman Collection. More commonly known as Gallery 153, this space, located inside the Met

Fifth Avenue, offers a well-staged reminder for human consciousness of the past intending to

reveal to visitors “new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.”8

Essentially, Gallery 153 is a grand corridor that connects the Great Hall at the Met’s main

entrance to the heart of the museum’s Greek and Roman collection while displaying large-scale

Greek sculpture and other monumental works of the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries B.C. In an

encyclopedic institution with nearly 600 objects considered “essential masterpieces,”9 it is

apparent that most patrons cannot experience all the museum contains in a single visit.

Therefore, it is advantageous for the Met to display works from the collection that see the best

reception amongst the viewing public in the most easily accessible galleries (see Figure 8). This

arrangement does not prove favorable to a significant and valid portion of the museum’s

collection. But since the Greek and Roman galleries host the Met’s most frequently

7 “New Greek and Roman Galleries, Including the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court: [Press

Kit],” Metropolitan Museum of Art, Communications Department, 2007, 1.

library.metmuseum.org 8 “Mission Statement,” Metropolitan Museum, accessed January 2020, Metmuseum.org/about-

the-met. 9 Campbell P. Thomas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide, New York: The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, 2012.

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photographed and sketched works of art, this arrangement is undoubtedly favorable from a

marketing perspective.

The barrel-vaulted ceiling of Gallery 153 offers a natural light that illuminates the various

shades of stone. The Marble statue of a woman, referred to hereafter as the Met statue, inhabits

an open corner of the spacious and airy room featuring walls lined with staggering marble

figures (see Figures 9-10). The sculpted forms observable in the space exist in a fragmented

state, the majority presented without limbs or heads. Many of these body parts belonging to the

figures are now noticeably absent, as some were also carved separately from the statues meant to

behold them, making the pieces more prone to separation. Flesh, muscle, and drapery compose

the artistic nucleus of Gallery 153. While perhaps soothing to the eyes, the natural palette of the

space is cold and intrusive in terms of sensation. The marble’s organic coloring highlighted in

the harsh and heated tones of the gallery’s lighting does not compensate for or seem to

acknowledge the lack of vibrant color. The reality is that most visitors who gravitate through this

gallery do not anticipate a room full of intense hues. Harold Koda, Curator-in-charge of the

Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum, calls attention to this predisposition when he

states: “There’s a perception that classical sculpture was originally white because we see the

bleached remnants of objects, marbles that have been denuded of the original pigmentation. In

fact, classical dress had a huge spectrum of color.”10 It is worth indicating that the historical

accuracy of that “spectrum of color” Koda mentions is not necessarily observable in Gallery 153.

It almost appears as if the uniformity is intensified for the sake of an appealing aesthetic. In the

10 Audio file #1475 “Marble Statue of a Woman Part 2,” Metropolitan Museum, accessed

November 2019, Metmuseum.org/art/collection/themis.

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eyes of an institution like the Met, there must be established standards of physical qualities a

work of art need possesses to appear in a setting of this grandeur.

The Met’s 2007 renovation of the Greek and Roman Galleries into a “spectacular

“museum-within-the-museum” for the display of its extraordinary collection,”11 is the carefully

staged viewing context of the Met statue we may experience today. A primary goal of the

galleries’ renovation, according to 2007 museum director, Philippe de Montebello, was “to

construct anew within the framework of our historic building, to make use of new methodologies

while honoring the old, and to encourage our visitors to look at ancient art in a new

way…”12 The influence of such a drastic installation on the interaction between the artwork and

the visitors emphasizes the extreme value placed on classical works by the art world’s

institutionalized standards for aesthetics:

The thing about looking at art in a museum is that you usually know already that

the art is supposed to be important, and so the exercise becomes not looking,

merely, but admiring. Is looking at a work of art in a museum-like meeting

someone really famous or successful and having a hard time treating her as a real

person? The value of a work of art becomes a yardstick and looking becomes an

act of measurement.13

The historical context, visual form, or presentation of the Met statue are not the only factors that

shape how visitors understand the figure’s significance and its relevance to where we are now,

for they are not all-inclusive of the statue’s perpetually shifting visual form.

11 Metropolitan Museum, “New Greek and Roman Galleries,” 1. 12 Metropolitan Museum, “New Greek and Roman Galleries,” 1: “Some 5,300 works previously

in storage, many of them collected in the earliest years after the Museum’s founding in 1870,

will now be installed on two levels of commodious new galleries by our brilliant team of curators

under the leadership of Carlos Picón, Curator in Charge of the Department of Greek and Roman

Art, and with the outstanding organizational abilities of Collections Coordinator Bill Gagen.” 13 Amy Whitaker, Museum Legs, (Hol Art Books, 2009), 198.

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A work of art is a part of the past as soon as it is created. When we see a work of art, we

see it in the context of our own life. Whether or not an image can only evoke a story the viewer

already knows, understanding its meaning is created based on personal context. The context in

which we find ourselves experiencing these works indicates a greater truth of our collective

social and cultural identity. Questions about a work that are raised, not raised, and how they are

answered speak volumes for the environment in which it is seen. The way we look at art is why

art exists in its current state. Art is a product of its time, as is its reception. This is to say that

“just looking” at a work of art is never just looking because that act of looking is invested with

identity and preconceived notions of what the spectator thinks art to be.14

The following research investigates the peculiar life of the Met statue in various viewing

contexts that make up the work’s known history. Mainly, the focus is on what those contexts tell

us about how we interact with art from the past. This research begins with an assessment of the

statue’s present visual form and an analysis of the statue’s identity and reception in the classical

world, its excavation, and restoration in the seventeenth century, up to the Met’s treatment of it

from the acquisition in 1903 to modern-day. A discussion of how that reception is demonstrative

of each context’s social and cultural values will support the theory that it is the context in which

we experience the Met statue that determines its meaning and significance in relation to our

existence and our place in history.

14 Ray Williams, “Honoring the Personal Response,” Journal of Museum Education35, no.

1(2010): 93-102.

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Chapter One: A Role in Stone

Personification is a means of taking hold of things which suddenly appear

startingly uncontrollable and independent—the rolling stone, the blaze of the

sunrise, the incurable disease, the irresistible desire, or the rule by which men

conduct their political affairs. These all seem to have some kind of life and so are

in some way human.15

The ability to manipulate and transform images into a desirable form and the ability of

those images to shape and expose social or cultural values is not restricted to the ancient past.

Knowledge of the historical context, or lack thereof, of the Met statue must now preface a

viewing of the work. “Everything around the image is a part of its meaning. Its uniqueness is part

of the uniqueness of the single place where it is. Everything around it confirms and consolidates

its meaning.”16 The adaptable form of this figure, established in ancient Greece by mode of

personification, conforms to the imperishable communicative function of art. “Art, to fulfill its

total function, has to achieve communication with its audience. If art has no communicative role,

then it cannot maintain, perpetuate, or change cultures.”17 This chapter considers the form,

identity, and personifying function of the Met statue. Such a discussion leads us to the

understanding that in order for the statue to play each part a viewing context casts her as, her role

as an adaptation is the only role in which we may find the work’s cultural relevance.

The Met statue, displayed amongst other works of Greek art from the sixth, fifth, and

fourth centuries B.C., portrays a “majestic female figure”18 standing gracefully in fragmented

form. The cascading drapery of the statue’s tunic accentuates its reactive pose by exposing a

15 T. B. L. Webster, “Personification as a Mode of Greek Thought.” Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes 17, no. 1/2 (1954): 10-11. 16 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 2008), 33. 17 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 33. 18 Audio File #2201 “Marble Statue of a Woman, Part 3,” Metropolitan Museum, accessed

November 2019, Metmuseum.org/art/collection/themis.

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slight indentation in the delicate linen fabric on the figure’s bended right knee. The rigid fluidity

of this contrapposto stance hints at the figure’s potential for movement, and at the living,

perhaps even divine, flesh within the waves of fabric. A large cloak wraps loosely around the

statue and drapes heavily over a fragmented left arm. The right arm is broken off just below the

shoulder.19 The figure possesses a certain elegance within the cocoon of the densely gathered

drapery that emphasizes the effortless manner in which the clothes and the body “define one

another in a graceful and natural way.”20

Despite the statue’s shroud of elegance and grace, the intended identity of the figure

cannot be determined by an initial observation apart from it depicting an ancient female

mythological figure. The fractured state of the marble leaves us with no unique, easily

identifiable traits or attributes that could help viewers give this statue a name or meaning

appropriate to its historical context. However, in an attempt to deepen the viewing experience for

museum visitors, the Met provides a wall label21 that accompanies the work in Gallery 153 to

supplement the details of the statue that are not visible:

The lively, varied manner in which the texture of the clothing is rendered suggests

that this is a Greek original rather than a Roman copy. The crinkly linen of the

19 The statue in its current physical state is missing its head and its neck, which appears broken

off at its base. The right arm is broken off just above her elbow. The left arm, while certainly

worn, appears relatively complete from the shoulder to the hand that cups her gathered drapery,

although she is missing her thumb and two adjoining fingers on that left hand. The little toe from

the left foot is missing. The drapery has suffered quite a few chips. 20 Metropolitan Museum, Audio File #2201 “Marble Statue of a Woman, Part 3.” 21 Whitaker, Museum Legs, 85-86: “The wall label itself is a form of conversation between

museum and visitor, and the problem isn’t with the conversation so much as with the relationship

it represents. Museums have had wall labels at least since the 1600s, if not before; but labeling a

curiosity (This is a mammoth bone) has a different stake on truthfulness than labeling some

abstract works (This nearly blank canvas is very important). Both labels imply a form of “Trust

us” (that it’s not a cow bone, that it’s good art). Real trust is in the art itself, only aided by the

training wheels, or joyful accelerator, of attendant information. Yet that tiny tag or placard of the

wall label often seems to hold the symptomatic test of trust in institutions, whether light and

sturdy, or entirely a mirage.”

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chiton (tunic) and the heavier wool of the himation (cloak) are carefully

differentiated, and horizontal press folds add variety to the latter's surface. The

drilled holes on the sleeves once held metal buttons. The upper part of the chiton is

kept firmly in place by a cord that is crossed in back and slipped over the arms.

This over-life size figure probably represents a goddess, and in the absence of other

attributes, the shoulder cord may offer a clue to her identity. Although the huntress

Artemis is often shown with such a cord, this more matronly figure may represent

Themis, a goddess associated with custom and law. The head and neck were carved

separately and provided with a rounded tenon that was set into the cavity at the top

of the torso.22

Themis, the daughter of Uranus and Gaea, belongs to the race of the Titans: “On Olympus she

maintained order, but on earth she had an extensive reign as Goddess of Justice.”23 Themis

represents the “embodiment of order and balance that society depend[s] upon and externalizes on

behalf of the general good.”24 Common associations with Themis include divine or natural law

according to custom, justice, and right while her name even came to be known as the nesting

place that housed discussions of the law. Her presence in art and literature resonates and

develops significantly in classical Athenian art. The iconography of Themis includes instruments

of libation such as a phiale and oinochoe, but she may also appear with a scepter in hand in other

early classical personifications. Prior to the fifth century, Themis is affiliated with abundance

and fertility. The goddess tends to appear predominantly in mythic scenes that were indirectly or

allusively political, notably, in the visual culture of fifth century Athens. It is in this period that

Themis begins to appear with a torch and sometimes a traditional kanoun as well. These

additions are common but significant attributes considered “appropriate in all Athenian religious

22 Metropolitan Museum, Marble Statue of a Woman, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C., Greek,

accessed November 2019, Metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/themis. 23 Bradford Venable, “The “Iconologia:” Helping Art Students Understand Allegory,” Art

Education 61, no. 3 (2008): 19. 24 Jane Burnett, History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures: Papers Delivered at a

Symposium Organized by the Departments of Antiquities and Antiquities Conservation of the J.

Paul Getty Museum and Held at the Museum 25-27 October 2001. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty

Museum, 2003, 80.

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festivals.”25 Personifications of Themis that depict the goddess holding a short laurel or apple

branch also indicate her religious nature, or presence of divine law. In most Attic representations,

Themis wears fluttering, windblown drapery that is secured by shoulder cords in which her

sleeves are tied. Due to the practical function of shoulder cords, they were most often worn by

charioteers and figures associated with battle.26 However, when worn by Themis, the shoulder

cords symbolize “the control exercised on human life by law, order and custom.”27 The Met

statue’s chiton, a tunic-like garment common to both men and women, is secured at the upper

part by a shoulder cord that crosses in the back and is slipped over the statue's now fragmented

arms. The shoulder cord on the Met statue is the only piece of visual evidence that the

Metropolitan Museum directly offers the public for the statue's possible identification as Themis.

In the absence of more attributes, it is difficult to accept without question the identification of the

statue as Themis. After all, shoulder cords become generic female attire among artists,

consequently, requiring further identifying evidence.

Admired archaeologist and Met assistant director, Edward Robinson (1858-1931),

elaborated on the evidence used to determine the figure’s identity and historical context in a

1906 publication of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin:

The type and pose of the figure, with its ample proportions, its weight thrown

upon the left leg, and the mantle hanging lightly over the left arm, are not unusual,

and as both type and pose were employed in representations of different divinities

it is no longer possible to identify the subject of the statue in its present condition.

Perhaps the best-known example of the type is the statue of Themis, which was

found at Rhamnous in 1890, and is now in the National Museum at Athens. Our

statue is not a replica of that, however, as the mantle is considerably shorter, the

right foot is drawn farther back, and there are numerous small differences in the

25 Amy C. Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, (Leiden, MA: Brill, 2011), 46-47. 26 Because the shoulder cords are the typical attire for charioteers their presence is why many art

historians consider Artemis as a potential identification of figures that are visually similar in

form. 27 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 48.

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arrangement of the drapery. The marble of our statue is apparently Pentelic; its

height, without the plinth, is 5 feet, 61 inches.28

Accompanying Robinson’s commentary is the earliest known photograph of Marble

statue of a woman titled “Figure of a Goddess” (Figure 11).29 For an illustration of the

Themis statue from Rhamnous, known as the Chairestratos Themis, which Robinson

offered as a comparand to the Met Statue, see Figure 12 and Figure 13 on the right. The

similarity that is observable in the pose and sculptural quality of Robinson’s example of

the Chairestratos Themis certainly appears to support an identification as Themis.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to present additional, labeled, examples of Themis in ancient

sculpture despite quite a few convincing examples of statues with a striking visual

similarity.

Sculptures of figures that scholars speculate to identify the goddess Nemesis

(Figure 13 on the left and Figures 14-15) present great physical similarities to the Met

statue, not only because of the figures’ pose and the structured fall of linen framing her

form, but also because Themis and Nemesis are actually “interconnected in myth”30 and

well known together “in the arts and cults of Archaic Greece.”31 By the fifth century,

Nemesis was recognized as a personification of divine retribution justified by righteous

28 E. Robinson, “The Giustiniani Marbles,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 1, no. 6

(1906): 80. 29 Julie Zeftel, Senior Manager of Digital Rights and Permissions at the Metropolitan Museum,

email to author, May 11, 2020: A substantial number of hours I spent searching for additional

knowledge or images of the statue’s previous form in the Met’s Digital Collection proved

fruitless. While the online research aid and materials the Met provides are of an unmatched

quality in content and navigation, I sent a plea in the form of a direct message to a handful of the

Met’s thirty Instagram accounts. A response soon arrived from the Met Imaging Department

(@metimaging) with news that the earliest photograph of the statue that could be found in the

museum’s database was dated from 1907, following the removal of the Giustiniani additions. 30 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 46. 31 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 46.

17

indignation.32 Both Themis and Nemesis tended to appear in mythic scenes that were

indirectly or allusively political. However, of the two deities it is only Nemesis whose

iconography includes the attachment of wings like those seen in Figure 13 and Figure 15.

Scholars speculate additional works, like the sculpted female torso seen in the Statue of

Themis from Athens (Figure 16), to identify Themis based on comparable evidence to the

Met statue in its densely rendered drapery and the presence of a shoulder cord. Classical

archaeologist, Amy C. Smith, disputes such speculations in her text Polis and

Personification in Athenian Art, when considering whether or not we can identify Themis

if she isn’t labeled. According to Smith, such a task proves increasingly improbable, as

she states that Themis’ “actions and companions are the most obvious hints” in doing

so.33 In an additional response to the theories that Figure 16 represents Themis, classical

archaeologist, Olga Palagia, emphasizes how the deity’s frequently shifting form and

increasingly generalized iconography make this conclusion unlikely: “Themis warns us

against belief in firmly established iconographical types.”34

Scholarship that explicitly discusses the Met statue is evidently scarce. Gisela M. A.

Richter’s 1953 publication, Handbook of the Greek Collection, catalogs the Met’s collection of

ancient Greek art. Richter (1882-1972), one of the first female curators in the United States,

32 Excerpt from the poem For Those Who Betrayed Nemesis by Nikita Gill: “…She made a rope

of her own spine and drew herself to the surface without the help of any God. You can run and

hide as far as you want, and wish for her to fall. But she has tamed her monsters, they are now

her army and she rides her demons into battle. She is Nemesis the Goddess of Retribution and

she is coming for you all.” 33 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 48. 34 Olga Palagia, “A Colossal Statue of a Personification from the Agora of Athens,” Hesperia:

The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 51, no. 1 (1982): 110.

18

curated the Metropolitan Museum’s Greek and Roman collection from 1925-1948.35 In a

complete re-examination of many statues in the museum’s collection, Richter refers to the Met

statue as “Statue of a Draped Woman” (Figure 17).36 A more skeptical perspective than

Robinson, Richter expresses in the catalog: “The large size of the statue suggests that a deity was

represented, and wearing of the cords that she was a young goddess…”37 In her description

Richter concludes: “In the absence of attributes a specific identification is not possible.”38

Richter also refrains from commenting on the type of marble of the statue, potentially in

opposition to Robinson’s tentative labeling of Pentelic.

It soon becomes apparent that even the most recent archaeological and historical research

do not allow for a definitive labeling of the Met statue as Themis but provide just enough viable

visual and historical evidence to support the museum’s probable identification.39 Based on what

evidence does exist for the figure’s identification, as well as the utilization and impact of the

visual arts in ancient Greece during the Late Classical period, it is near certain that the statue’s

intended role or function was that of a personification—a figure whose form is human but

embodies abstract concepts and values.40 Personifications in ancient Greece “...are invented and

discarded ad hoc, inhabit the middle ground between gods, heroes, and humans, and therefore

35 “Gisela Righter, Art Curator, Dies,” New York Times, December 26, 1972, Times Machine:

Prior to her promotion to Curator, Richter climbed the hierarchy of positions at the museum as

an assistant from 1905-1925. 36 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), and Gisela M. A. Richter. Handbook of the

Greek Collection. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 1953), 75. 37 Richter, Handbook of the Greek Collection, 75. 38 Richter, Handbook of the Greek Collection, 75. 39 The Met does acknowledge the identification as Themis as probable. 40 Klaus Junker, Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths: An Introduction, Translated by

Anthony M. Snodgrass and Annemarie Kunzl-Snodgrass, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2012, 88.

19

are adaptable to any narrative situation.”41 A role as a civic personification formed the general

understanding of Themis during the Late Classical period, which identifies her as a

representation of personal virtues that benefited the community as a whole. The social and

cultural significance of virtues in civic and private affairs determined their relevance, or

appropriate use, in different ritual and political settings. A depiction of the civic virtue, Themis,

with a human form was deliberately used as the literal representation of a non-human entity. The

historical emphasis on the role of Themis as the personification of religious and political order or

custom is a reflection of her stylistic changes and shifting associations in visual culture. This

shift is historically evident due, in part, to the influence and desires of an “increasingly urban

concern with law and political order alongside the rise of the archaic polis.”42 In an investigation

of the role of personifications in classical Athenian art, Smith writes:

Personifications in ancient Greece were most prevalent in Athens during its

democratic period (508-322), when Athenian artists created and depicted—in

increasing numbers—personifications with political implications: geographical

and political divisions as well as civic institutions, festivals, virtues, and other

concepts.43

It is no secret that the most powerful political device a leader can exploit is image. “Art must

also be regarded as one of the forces which helps to keep the personification alive. The artist and

the dramatist must personify if they want to represent something immaterial instead of restricting

themselves to showing its effects on visible things.”44 In the classical world we see an increase in

the presence of personifications of mythological figures as representative of things, places,

institutions, and personal and civic virtues in order to express and promote an abstract concept.

41 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 2. 42 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 46. 43 Smith, Polis and Personification in Athenian Art, 3. 44 Webster, "Personification as a Mode of Greek Thought," 12.

20

Personifications, “integrated for their explanatory power change the character of the image of

myth fundamentally,”45 present abstractions through the concrete and sustainable means of

seeing and creativity. Resulting in the implication: “The balance between the advantages and

disadvantages of imagery as a medium, by comparison with a myth expressed in language, has

shifted.”46 Archaeologist Klaus Junker writes in Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths:

In recent research on the forms and effects of communication, it is now

commonly accepted that in addition to verbally conducted discourse, there is also

a ‘discourse of images’, meaning that in every field of human activity—cultural,

political, or economic—different types of expression and message are closely

bound to a complex use of visual media. This is as true for antiquity as it is

today.47

This trend in the use of visual material offers a demonstration on the prevailing acceptance that

“...one of the main functions of art as communication is to reinforce belief, custom, and values

by supplementing the abstractions of belief with emotion provoking symbolism. Art may also

contribute to the spread of a particular belief.”48 Scholars’ identification of the Met statue as a

goddess from the Late Classical period supports this particular role as a personification.

Therefore, regardless of the figure’s identity, the statue surely represents an abstract concept

directed at a specific audience in a singular moment in time. But can we translate one culture

without making it about our own? It is in light of this reality that the contemporary relevance of

the Met statue and its fleeting identity seems less significant.

One could argue that the Met statue continues to fulfill its original function as a

personification by reflecting the values, beliefs, and objectives of the culture that views her. We

45 Junker, Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths: An Introduction, 90. 46 Junker, Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths: An Introduction, 90. 47 Junker, Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths: An Introduction, 12. 48 Frank Graeme Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art

Education, (Eugene, OR:1971), 51.

21

saw this behavior when the stone figure rose from her ruins in the seventeenth century and

adopted an entirely new identity that she would represent up until her arrival at the Met Fifth

Ave in 1903. The Met statue’s pattern of survival affirms an adaptable physical form that is

capable of a multi-contextual representation of social and cultural values projected onto stone.

The statue reaches this sustainable presence through the dialogue viewers construct between

themselves and the work. As John Berger (1926-2017) comments in Ways of Seeing: “The art of

the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of

images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose.”49 This is not to say that

the historical context of the ancient past is becoming vacant in the eyes of modern relevance. It is

the past that brought it to us today and the past that we are creating through our interactions with

history that will sustain the transfer of the ancient past to the future whether it is through our

research or our ruins.

The figure at the Met consecrates the theoretical and political values of her viewing

context but only does so upon interaction with a spectator who sees using those values as a lens.

If we are to only view the work through a lens confined by historical context, how do we find

meaning in the marble from our own context? To activate that meaning, one must interact with

the statue witnessing the quality of visual art as a “major language system capable of

communicating qualities of experience that cannot be put into words.”50

Decontextualizing artwork is dangerous and occurs with ease when looking at a work

with an ambiguous identity. However, the role the Met statue was created to fill as a

personification sustains itself by a metamorphosing meaning infused with cultural and social

49 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 33. 50 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 34.

22

values. The context of the viewing experience enshrouds that meaning, restricting its

understanding to the eye of the beholder and establishing an evolving dialogue that forms the

statue’s collective identity: “The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees

immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. Such authority as it retains, is

distributed over the whole context in which it appears.”51 If we are to restrict the role of the Met

statue to the Late Classical period, then we create a gap between the context in which the work

was created and the context in which we view it. Such passivity towards history is demeaning

towards the relevance of art. But art history is looking at culture using art as a lens.52 Keeping

this in mind, the following chapters will analyze the known life of the Met statue and its

progressing interactions that enrich its historical dialogue and our own engagement with the

stone.

51 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 24. 52 I am not certain who it was that originally said this, but it was the most repeated phrase

amongst all my art history professors throughout my undergraduate education.

23

Chapter Two: Heads Will Roll

The visible brings the world to us. But at the same time it reminds us ceaselessly

that it is a world in which we risk to be lost. The visible with its space also takes

the world away from us. Nothing is more two-faced.53

It is not the time of an object’s creation that gives it historical value but the life of that

object from the time of creation to the time we view it. In many cases, it is up to museums to

bridge that gap in visitors’ perceptions. An average visitor who gazes upon the works of Gallery

153 views a statue such as the Marble statue of a woman with the understanding that it existed

and operated in a context prior to the museum’s acquisition. However, this understanding often

accompanies inaccurate assumptions perpetuated by antiquity’s representation in popular culture.

The cultural response to the allure of the classical world provides the lens which filters the Met

statue’s manner of display since its uncovering in the early seventeenth century when the figure

belonged to the expansive Giustiniani Collection in Rome. The statue remained in the Giustiniani

Collection until the Met’s acquisition in 1903. Treatment of the statue from its unearthing and

restoration in the seventeenth century to the Met’s purchase and exhibition of the figure unveils

several distinct perspectives of the statue’s meaning, all of which derived significance from the

cultural and social values of the viewing context.

Analyzing the Metropolitan Museum’s response in the early twentieth century to the

modern-day era of the statue’s history helps frame the context in which museums view and value

works of art.54 One positive example of the museum’s attempts to bridge the gap between the

creation of a piece and us experiencing it is the supplemental audio guides that present a more in-

53 Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 50. 54 This research may serve as valid proof that museums, specifically the Met, seemed to have

positively evolved in terms of acquisition and historical preservation and make more responsible

decisions regarding their collection.

24

depth commentary on the Marble statue of a woman’s existence before the museum’s

acquisition.55 In Audio File #1457: Marble statue of a woman Part 2, the speaker delivers

unprecedented details on the statue’s history:

The popes and princes of the Italian Renaissance formed some of the first

collections of Classical sculpture. This statue was part of a collection made in the

early seventeenth century by the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, who amassed

some 1500 ancient works at his palace in Rome and his country villas. Most of

them were dug up in Rome and the surrounding region. But this statue, a Greek

original, could’ve come from the Island of Chios, where members of the

Giustiniani family had served as governor.56

Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637) was an aristocratic Italian banker and art

collector who founded the Giustiniani Collection of Ancient Sculptures during the first thirty

years of the seventeenth century.57 The Giustiniani family ruled the Island of Chios for two

centuries. The works acquired by Vincenzo Giustiniani formed one of the most diverse and

expansive collections in Rome during the 1620s. The collection counted nearly 1,900 statues,

busts, and reliefs that existed among various properties: the Giustiniani palace in Rome, two

villas, one outside Porta del Popolo and one close to San Giovanni in Laterano, and his property

at Bassano di Sutri.58 Many of the works found in the Giustiniani Collection were objects of

antiquity that “came from collections assembled in Rome as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth

55 Audio guides are mobile listening tools that expand upon the information provided in the wall

text. These guides are accessible to visitors at the museum interested in conducting self-guided

tours of the galleries and the museum’s website in the form of podcasts. 56 Metropolitan Museum, Audio File #1457 “Marble statue of a woman Part 2.” 57 Angela Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources for the Statues of the Giustiniani

Collection,” History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures: Papers Delivered at a

Symposium Organized by the Departments of Antiquities and Antiquities Conservation of the J.

Paul Getty Museum and Held at the Museum 25-27 October 2001. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty

Museum, 2003): 191. 58 Olga Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” Metropolitan Museum

Journal 40 (2005): 197, Jstor.org.

25

centuries or were excavated during Giustiniani’s lifetime in the vicinity of the palace.”59

Unfortunately, the provenience of the sculptures in the Giustiniani Collection is widely

uncertain: “Except in rare cases the provenience of the works is not known. Some had been

found by chance on the family's estates; more had probably been purchased on the antiquarian

market.”60 Although this provenience of the statue remains unsettled, it is probably one of the

works that were excavated at a Giustiniani family estate. The Giustiniani Collection at the palace

in Rome is the location that displayed Met statue from the early seventeenth century until its

arrival at the Metropolitan Museum in 1903. Valued for its decorative appeal, the Met statue was

likely installed as an accessory for exterior decoration in the niches or courtyards of Giustiniani’s

palace subject to the elements (see Figure 18).

At the time of Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani’s death in 1637, many sculptures in the

Giustiniani Collection showed evidence of restorations. While no longer visually detectable, the

restorations of the Met statue have left traces in various parts of the body:

In 1631, Vincenzo Giustiniani had engravings made of his collection and this

work appears there with restorations in the taste of the time. The statue was

provided with a head, a Roman portrait of a woman, and arms as well as a

cornucopia had been specially carved to complete the work. When the statue

arrived at the Metropolitan Museum these additions were still in place. From the

Renaissance onward, ancient marble statues had been prized by art patrons as

decoration for their great houses. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the copies

were dug up, heavily cleaned, and the missing parts were carved and added to

make a complete statue. But as appreciation developed for the integrity and

beauty of the original fragmentary work, this type of restoration ceased and, in

some cases, the modern additions have been removed, as you can see here.61

Galleria Giustiniana del Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, published in 1640, catalogs the early

seventeenth century collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani through a series of engravings of the

59 Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” 201. 60 Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources,” 191. 61 Metropolitan Museum, Audio File #1457 “Marble statue of a woman Part 2.”

26

works from his collection. The engraving that the Met references as a depiction of the statue

marks one of the few representations of the work with the seventeenth century additions still

intact. Plate 20 (Figure 19) portrays a standing female figure with heavily rendered drapery in an

undeniably identical stance to the statue now in the museum’s possession. The figure nests a

large cornucopia in her left arm and holds a bundle of wheat in her right hand with the arm

extending outward and a diadem placed upon her head. Assuming the accuracy of what is

depicted in Figure 19, the seventeenth century restorations converted the marble form into a

personification of the Roman goddess Fortuna, an embodiment of fortune and luck.

Art historian Nancy H. Ramage’s article “Restorer and Collector: Notes on Eighteenth-

Century Recreations of Roman Statues” discusses the practice of restoring works from antiquity

for elite collections like that of Vincenzo Giustiniani. According to Ramage, a complete

sculpture with modern additions was considered far more desirable than a fragmented work in

the eyes and hands of those interacting with this collection in the seventeenth century. Ramage

states: “...it seemed to make no difference whether a collection of "antiquities" was truly ancient

or whether it consisted of a mixture of genuine Greek and Roman sculpture, plaster casts, heavily

restored ancient fragments, or even outright forgeries.”62 Restorers’ ability to acquire ancient

fragments to complete disfigured works was a common practice that made many restored works

a collage of ancient fragments. Ramage includes a description of such habits by James

Dallaway63 from the late eighteenth century:

The popes and cardinals of the Barbarini [sic], Borghese, and Giustiniani families,

when they formed their collections from recent discoveries, exhibited only the

62 Nancy H. Ramage, “Restorer and Collector: Notes on Eighteenth-Century Recreations of

Roman Statues,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes 1 (2002):

61. 63 James Dallaway (1763-1834) was an English writer, antiquary, and topographer who often

produced work that focused on European art from ancient to modern times.

27

most perfect statues, or such as were capable of restoration. The fragments and

torsos were then consigned to cellars, from whence they have been extracted

piecemeal by the Roman sculptors; by Cavaceppi, Cardelli, Pacilli, in particular,

who have restored many of them, with wonderful intelligence and skill.64

No doubt, born out of the aesthetical tastes of the time, these practices raise the question of

whether or not the identity of Fortuna was constructed out of the fragments of fallen goddesses?

While not every object in the Giustiniani Collection underwent restorations, Galleria Giustiniana

del Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani only illustrated works restored to completion.65 According to

Angela Gallottini in “Restoration Techniques and Sources for the Statues of the Giustiniani

Collection,” Vincenzo Giustiniani “Chose to have engraved the restored rather than the

unrestored version. Why? Probably because of the quality of the restoration, but also because it

showed a more nearly complete and new iconography compared to any others, the initial focus of

restoration.”66 This initial focus of restoration “…was primarily on restoring the statues located

in the main salons and principal allies of the estates, and the heads were completed with busts

and pedestals.”67 While Gallontini does not directly speak of the Met statue, or a representation

of Fortuna, she offers a truthful perspective of restoration practices which, according to

Gallottini: “… had always been a source of economic support for the sculptors.”68 Her research

is validated by recently uncovered documents that reveal “the names of the restorers who worked

at various times on the Giustiniani Collection, as well as the actual statues they worked on.”69

The context of the restorations alerts us to the escalating likelihood of the artistic merit of the

64 Ramage, “Restorer and Collector: Notes on Eighteenth-Century Recreations of Roman

Statues,” 62. 65 Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources,” 191. 66 Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources,” 200. 67 Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources,” 191. 68 Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources,” 197. 69 Gallottini, “Restoration Techniques and Sources,” 191.

28

now missing additions to the Met statue, supporting a perspective of their reassembly as an act of

artistic production instead of tacky and trend-influenced compensation as framed by the Met.70

At the present moment, the restorer of Fortuna remains unknown. Still, it is certain that many

prominent sculptors whose pieces retained significant value over the last few centuries labored

over several sculptures in the Giustiniani collection. 71 Despite this developing knowledge of the

restorations and the wishes of the Met statue’s longest identified owner, the figure appears as it

did before to its refurbishment in the “Golden Age” of restoration.

The possibility that the sculptor who restored the Met statue is not a well-recorded

sculptor with a robust portfolio does remain, which can take the sting out of the restorations’

absence. Nevertheless, the reality that the restorations even took place to begin with reveal the

seventeenth century’s relationship to antiquity formed by social and cultural values of the time.

Beginning in the fourteenth century, objects of antiquity became subject to elite status and high

demand because of the humanist idea that such objects could form a more authentic picture of

classical civilization.72 Efforts to refabricate the antique out of a desire to evoke classical ideals

and elevate status through visual means often resulted in artistic intervention. This included

efforts such as the restoration of fragmented ancient sculptures to completion by modern

additions in the classical style. In an article titled “Iconology, Intention, Imagos, and Myths of

Meaning,” art historian Seymour Howard argues that “mutilated antiquities” metamorphose into

70 Metropolitan Museum, Audio File #1457 “Marble Statue of a Woman Part 2.” 71 Notable sculptors identified as having restored works in the Giustiniani Collection include

Pietro Bernini and son, a most esteemed sculptor of the Italian Baroque period, Gian Lorenzo

Bernini, as well as François Duquesnoy, Francesco Oliva, and Arcangelo Gonnelli. There is a

growing amount of knowledge on the amount of sculptures from the Italian Renaissance and

Baroque periods of art that were originally works of antiquity. 72John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke, Art in Renaissance Italy, 4th ed., Upper Saddle River:

Prentice Hall (2012), 282.

29

“vehicles for projected taste and fancy as well learned study.”73 Howard goes on to further

contextualize our understanding of these restorations by adding:

Restorations—often involuntary confessions of taste manifested by versions of

their fusions and juxtapositions of old and new—made the norms of antiquity

meaningful, beautiful, and life-enhancing to the maker and his re-creating ally, the

patron, or viewer.

Market response, reputation, and influence similarly reveal the latent

meaningfulness of compatible or otherwise nourishing imagery that affects

revolutionary changes in value.74

The reception of the classical world from the fourteenth century throughout the seventeenth

century sculpts a fictional state of mind that reconceptualized the reality of the ancient past as an

ethereal fantasy that makes cultures willing to lick it off knives just to get a taste. The notion of

the “classic,” as described by Howard as “A universal that survives all change in time and place,

is as much a snare and illusion as is the idea of complete objectivity. Whatever is life-enhancing

and gives some promise of immortality to the mystic, magician, or aesthete has value and

becomes cultural capital.”75 No cult of explanation can comprehensively assess the physical

remnants of another time and culture’s history because we are far too immersed in our own

divine or mortal intentions. In other words: “As successive waves of publications show, each

age, like a conqueror-survivor, remakes the past in terms of its own image and interests as well

as inheritance.”76 We will always make art from the past look the way it “should” because for

that moment of supreme creative and historical control, the past is living on our timeline when,

in fact, the opposite is our reality.

73 Seymour Howard, “On Iconology, Intention, Imagos, and Myths of Meaning,” Notes in the

History of Art, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1996), 1. 74 Howard, “On Iconology, Intention, Imagos, and Myths of Meaning,” 3. 75 Howard, “On Iconology, Intention, Imagos, and Myths of Meaning,” 3. 76 Howard, “On Iconology, Intention, Imagos, and Myths of Meaning,” 3.

30

Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani died childless in 1637. His efforts to preserve the

collection were executed through the establishment of a comprehensive fideicommissum77 in

1631 for the transfer of the collection to a distant relative, Andrea di Cassano Giustiniani.

Unfortunately, the late collector’s wishes were subject to neglect as the contents of the

Giustiniani Collection began to gradually decrease after the year 1700 due to difficult financial

times for the collection’s successors. The Met’s 1903 acquisition of a group of marbles from the

Giustiniani collection dated back to antiquity is arguably one of the most defining events in the

history of the museum’s Greek and Roman collection. In the Metropolitan Museum Journal,

Olga Raggio offers an account of the state of the remains of the Giustiniani Collection prior to

the Met’s involvement:

In the 1890s, amid the serious financial depression in the new State of Italy and

the real estate crash that brought about the sale of some of the most princely

Roman collections—the Boncompagni Ludovisi and the Borghese especially—

the only survivors of the once famous Giustiniani collection were a small group of

antiquities that remained in the palace near San Luigi dei Francesi. An inventory

compiled in 1900 for the Ministry of Public Instruction listed an assortment of

seventy-two sculptures, reliefs, heads, sarcophagi, and altars7 still in the palace,

which their owners were anxious to put on the market.78

The Met statue was one of these “survivors.” On July 8, 1902, Giuseppe Sangiorgi (1850-1928),

an Italian art dealer entrusted with the sale of the remaining antiquities in the Giustiniani

Collection, wrote to the Metropolitan Museum’s president, Frederick W. Rhinelander (1828-

1904), with an offer of a grouping of antique marbles from the collection.79 Efforts to complete

the acquisition were initially dismissed in a meeting of museum trustees. Still, the acquisition’s

77A fideicommissum is a legal institution of Roman Law in place for centuries where the owner

of a property transfers this property to another person, subject to it being transferred from that

person to yet another person at a later stage. 78 Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” 197. 79 Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” 197.

31

support from Rhinelander and the museum’s first director, General Luigi Palma di Censola

(1832-1904), gave rise to the formation of a special committee that would reconsider the

transaction. Upon further evaluation of the potential benefits for the museum in acquiring the

Giustiniani marbles, the committee recommended the purchase of the marbles on the condition

that the funds for the transaction came from a private subscription as opposed to the museum’s

acquisition funds. With this stipulation in mind, Rhinelander successfully elicited help from

friend, philanthropist, and recently widowed Mary Clark Thompson (1835-1923). Mrs.

Thompson purchased the Giustiniani marbles for a maximum sum of $60,000, which she then

gifted to the museum in memory of her deceased husband, Frederick Ferris Thompson (1836-

1899), a prominent New York City banker. On July 8, 1903, thirty-four statues, busts, and reliefs

arrived at the Met Fifth Avenue.

According to a 2005 publication, upon the collection’s arrival to the museum: “…The

sculptures were found to have suffered considerable damage in the course of transportation from

Rome, and decisions had to be taken as to the possible removal of the large number of

restorations to which they had been subjected in the seventeenth century.”80 In addition to the

alleged damage suffered from transportation, the majority of the sculptures removed from

Giustiniani’s palace in Rome had been displayed as exterior decoration (as seen in figure 18) and

sustained a reasonable amount of wear and tear, further supporting the controversial desire to

clean the marbles. Rhinelander expressed his wishes that the works “be left in the form in which

they appeared in the engravings of the Galleria Giustiniani and as they had been bought by Mrs.

Thompson.”81 However, Rhinelander’s sudden death, immediately followed by the passing of

80 Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” 200. 81 Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” 200.

32

General di Censola, postponed the decision until May of 1905. The task of assessing the

Giustiniani marbles then fell to archaeologist Edward Robinson, who arrived from the Museum

of Fine Arts in Boston. Robinson’s involvement intensified the development of what became

known as the Department of Greek and Roman Art in 1909. After Robinson stepped in, the

museum selected only eleven statues and six busts from the Giustiniani collection to keep and

display. The remaining pieces were either donated by Mrs. Thompson to Williams College or

Vassar College or transported to her country home.82 Both colleges eventually sold most of the

pieces from Thompson’s donation. Only a portion of the Giustiniani marbles finally saw the light

of the galleries by 1906 and the rest of the collection that the museum deemed salvageable, by

1909.

In the article “The Giustiniani Marbles” from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin

published in May 1906, Robinson addresses the museum’s delay in displaying the marbles and

proceeds to offer a complete list of the Giustiniani works in possession of the Met. Robinson

seems to identify the seventeenth century additions as the parts of the marbles subjected to the

most harm during transportation from Italy:

The restorations to which they had been subjected in the seventeenth century were

not calculated to withstand the hardships of transportation from Rome to New

82 E. Robinson, letter to President Rice, October 2, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Archives:

“While President of this Museum the late Mr. Rhinelander urged the purchase of this collection

upon the Trustees. As they declined to buy it, he persuaded his friend, Mrs. Thompson, to

present it to the Museum … [The sculptures were] inspected by the Committee on Sculpture, the

members of which were of the opinion that some of the figures had a sufficient value as objects

of decoration to warrant their acceptance, but that others had not even this much in their favor …

After my arrival here Mrs. Thompson … said that if there were any pieces among those rejected

which were good enough to present to Williams and Vassar College, even though they might not

be considered up to the standard of the Metropolitan Museum, she would like to give them to

those institutions … taking the balance to her own country estate at Canandaigua. You will thus

see that the collection was divided into three classes based on merit, and when I say that those

accepted by the Museum are not regarded as by any means first-rate examples you will perhaps

draw your own inferences as to the remainder …”.

33

York, and consequently when the statues were unpacked it was found that many

of the joints had opened, while others were so weakened that an almost complete

readjustment of the figures was necessary, in addition to the actual repairs. This

work was executed under the direction of Mr. F. Edwin Elwell, the late Curator of

Sculpture, and the statues and busts have now resumed the appearance which they

had for nearly three centuries in the Giustiniani palace.83

Robinson then goes on to address the seventeenth century restorations by suggesting that they

may “reflect almost as much the taste and archaeological knowledge of that period as they do the

spirit of antiquity; yet even from this point of view they have a historical interest, and they

possess the decorative qualities which are characteristic of the epoch when some of the more

famous of the Italian villas and palaces were built.”84 Robinson’s description of the statue

mentions the removed additions:

It was, to be sure, published by Sandrart in the Galleria Giustiniani, in 1635, and

copied from his drawing by Clarac in the Musée de la Sculpture but in those

illustrations it is shown in a side view,85 and is somewhat overpowered by the

disfiguring restorations which had converted it into a statue of Fortuna, holding

stalks of wheat in the right hand and a large cornucopia in the left. Stripped of

these attributes and of the wretched head which had been affixed to it, it gains

immensely in effect, and appears as in all probability an original Greek work of

the fourth century B. C. It is not a masterpiece, but a typical schoolwork of its

period, made at a time when the common sculptors were under the direct

influence of the great masters, and were thoroughly imbued with their spirit.

Consequently, while we miss the technical perfection and the masterly

spontaneity which would be found in the great works of the time, we find not only

a majestic dignity in the pose, but an ease and freedom in rendering the folds of

the drapery, a feeling for rhythm in its lines, and an absence of the hard and

lifeless execution which are common in the copies of Greek draped figures by

sculptors of the Roman period.86

83 E. R., “The Giustiniani Marbles,” 80. 84 E. R., “The Giustiniani Marbles,” 80. 85 Robinson’s acknowledgement of the limitations of the “side view” is an interesting

observation of the illustrations of the statue because the photographs of the statue provided on

the Metropolitan’s website, as well as other modern publications, only show the work from an

identical angle. 86 E. R., “The Giustiniani Marbles,” 81.

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A copy of the engraving done by Charles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste de Clarac in Musée de

sculpture offers further documentation that verifies the transformation of the statue into a

personification of Fortuna (Figure 20). Not only do scholars such as Robinson and Richter cite

the visual evidence offered in Figure 19 and Figure 20 as an explanation for the figure’s

seventeenth-century identity. But as of May 13, 2020, the Met’s Greek and Roman Department

refers to the engraving in Figure 19 as “what the statue may have looked like, taken from the

book, Galleria Giustiniana del Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani from 1631.”87 These restorations

are not present in Gallery 153 as only the statue’s headless form remains displayed for

observation, and that is the only manner in which the Metropolitan has exhibited the sculpture

for the public.

The museum’s publication of “The Giustiniani Marbles” is not a solitary historical

document that addresses the delays in putting the marbles on view. An article that directly

follows Robinson’s piece, “New Marbles and Vases Acquired by Museum” from New York

Times on May 7, 1906, states that the postponement in the display of the Giustiniani marbles was

due to “the imperfect condition in which the sculptures arrived here, certain repairs were

necessary.”88 The New York Times column then goes on to quote Robinson’s article, in almost

complete accuracy: “It is curious that of such of the Giustiniani statues as have come to America,

the finest and the one which brings us nearest to the spirit of the great period of classical

sculpture, should have remained comparatively unnoticed hitherto. This is the noble figure of a

87 This information, along with the image in Figure 15, was sent to me via Instagram direct

message, courtesy of the Greek and Roman Art’s Instagram account at the MET

(@metgreekandroman), on May 13, 2020. 88 E. R., “The Giustiniani Marbles,” 80.

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goddess, heroic size.”89 The museum’s bulletin and New York Times articles make two things

clear: First, the removal of the modern restorations occurred by 1906 and not later, like some of

the marbles under the curatorship of Gisela M. A. Richter.90 Second, in the Met’s broadcasting of

the Giustiniani acquisitions, Marble statue of a woman served as the collection’s strongest

showpiece for publicizing the growing collection of Greek and Roman art and elevating the

museum’s quality and status as an institution.

It is not the astonishing truth that the Met statue indeed assumed an alternative identity by

the seventeenth century that is so bewildering. Instead, it is the fact that the statue displayed a

head and additional marble attachments upon the museum’s acquisition in 1903, and that

representation of the figure appears intentionally withheld from the eyes of contemporary

visitors. A few details significant to the statue’s life that the spectator may not entirely unpack by

viewing it in Gallery 153 include: The statue’s shifting numerous sculpted identities, the

appearance of the figure with the seventeenth-century additions, and, a particular mystery, what

the museum did with the head, arms and cornucopia from an over-life-sized marble figure after

removal.

A tracing of the statue’s handling from the Giustiniani collection to the Met reveals a

shadowy history behind the work’s current physical state. Multiple sources cited in this research

claim that the Met statue arrived in New York City with the restored head and cornucopia still

89 “New Marbles and Vases Acquired by Museum,” New York Times, May 7, 1906, Times

Machine. 90 Raggio, “A Giustiniani Bacchus and François Duquesnoy,” 201: “In order to preserve the

historical interest of the sculptures, which were soon put on exhibition in the new galleries of the

Museum, their restorations remained undisturbed for an entire generation. It was not until 1939,

under the curatorship of Gisela M. A. Richter, that the Giustiniani marbles were thoroughly

reexamined and restudied to keep in step with the progress of modern archaeological inquiry and

in preparation for her forthcoming Catalogue of Greek Sculptures. In this context, most of the

Baroque restorations were removed…”

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intact. However, after being in contact with the Met’s Imaging Department, it was disclosed that

there is no indication that the museum retained the head or cornucopia as an individual work for

the collection.91 Several officials from the museum, including the Imaging Department and the

Collection of Greek and Roman Art, also could not uncover any photographic evidence of the

statue prior to the removal of the restorations. The earliest photograph the museum provided

comes from Robinson’s article published in 1906 (Figure 11). Because the sculpted additions of

the head, cornucopia, and bundled wheat are no longer physically associated with the Met statue

in marble, documents, or photographs, the disposal or current location of these additions remains

questionable. Although the condition in which these pieces arrived at the Met could have

contributed to the museum’s reasoning for their potential discard, ideally, the Met should have

treated these additions as archaeological artifacts irrespective of their date.

Considering the removal of the physical attributes that became a part of the Met statue’s

history as an “integrity”92 move is laughable. In a sense, it is the same sculpture with a different

story. A figure in a position of power in the world of art determined his taste as superior and

advantageous to the sculpture’s quality as a work of art. It appears that the Met treated this statue

no differently than Vincenzo Giustiniani. When looking at the Met statue in the context of the

Giustiniani restorations, the value of the figure’s completion outweighs its authenticity as an

artifact of classical antiquity. Each restoration took place in adherence to the values and tastes of

the visual culture at that time. But when perceived in the context of the Met’s restorations, the

value of Classical antiquity outweighs a complete, all-inclusive history of the statue. One might

91 I received email confirmation that there is no indication that the museum retained the head or

cornucopia as an individual work for the collection from the Metropolitan Museum’s Digital

Imaging department on May 11, 2020, in response to my outside request via social media. 92 Metropolitan Museum, Audio File #1457 “Marble statue of a woman Part 2.”

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question whether or not museums have the authority to participate in the creative process of the

works in their possession? Is the historical value of a work from antiquity restricted to its life in

the Classical world?

The desire to demonstrate status and wealth, the aesthetic preferences, and the cultural

and social function of the visual arts constitute the value and determine the functionality of the

Met statue in each context of restoration. Each addition or removal to the statue reflects artistic

tastes and theories of the time, and this influence proves crucial in determining the figure’s

functionality in those contexts. Evidence of the cultural functions of art being determinative of

artistic meaning materializes in the Met statue’s metamorphosis from a decorative element,

restored with a new divine persona made up of new or reused sculptural fragments, to a deity,

iconographically stripped in the name of historical authenticity. It is safe to assume that the

museum was operating under the marginalizing standards ideal of classical traditions and

standards of artistic achievement. These traditions and standards elevate the classical style as the

epitome of artistic success and what we accept as fine art in the westernized canon of art history.

This privileged use of material and style established and continues to promote a system for

ranking various mediums and styles of art. In the ranking of sculpture, figural sculptures from

ancient Greece receive top billing. Non-classical additions to sculpted works are not on par with

these aesthetic standards. The foreboding romance of the classical ruins in the imagery of a

fragmented goddess becomes less mystifying with more modern, conceivable additions that do

not live up to the fictional sculpture we’ve constructed in our heads. The physical removal of

history demonstrates an apathetic mode of art history fueled with elitist perspectives that imply a

more advanced understanding of different times and cultures. Information is not synonymous

with insight. The additions to the Met statue and their removal historically identifies how art is

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set up through institutions with the impression that classicism signals an elevated moral and

aesthetic sensitivity. Whatever the reasons that ordered for heads to roll from the Giustiniani

marbles, the actions and attitudes the museum demonstrated in the early twentieth century

exemplify “the museum instinct that seems to be about wanting to fix and control the past, to

revere the moments that in hindsight become important.”93 An established opinion and presumed

understanding of an object’s history does not imply the ultimate understanding of that object’s

meaning or the authority to resituate its history and make it fit a certain viewing context. “The

real question is: to whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? To those who

can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialists?”94

The contextual situations of the Met statue’s restorations in Rome and New York City

operated within a whole series of art and artmaking and misconceptions. These attitudes and

assumptions gnaw away at an already developing history to “obscure the past.”95 Once again,

Berger offers insightful commentary on these perceptions:

They mystify rather than clarify. The past is never there waiting to be discovered,

to be recognized for exactly what it is. History always constitutes the relation

between a present and its past. Consequently, fear of the present leads to

mystification of the past. The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions

from which we draw in order to act. Cultural mystification of the past entails a

double loss. Works of art are made unnecessarily remote. And the past offers us

fewer conclusions to complete in action.96

We are the past, and we talk about things in anticipation of the future. We are very much a part

of a larger operation that is our period. As Met Image Archivist Stephanie Post says in “Episode

One” of the recent series MET Stories: “Time is the best lens that you have because it helps you

93 Whitaker, Museum Legs, 200. 94 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 32. 95 Berger, Ways of Seeing,11. 96 Berger, Ways of Seeing,11.

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contextualize where you are.”97 Institutionalized superiority, which does not have the lifespan of

marble, supports this theory. Social Critic Camille Paglia said: “The earth is littered with the

ruins of empires who believed they were eternal.”98 Artistic reception feeds on the potential that

rests in our ruins. The transformation of the Met statue across time and cultures implores us to

comprehend our preconceived notions of antiquities and how those notions shape our dialogue

with the Met statue. “The meaning of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says

but in what it uniquely is. How is unique existence evaluated and defined in our present

culture?”99

97 Stephanie Post, “Tim Gunn, Silas Farley, and Stephanie Post | Looking Back to Look Forward

| Met Stories,” Metropolitan Museum, Video: 28. Metmuseum.org/150/met-stories. 98 The Artidote: ““The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.”

— Camille Paglia,” Facebook, November 23, 2015. Facebook.com/theartidote. 99 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 21.

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Chapter Three: Among Goddesses and Gucci

If you’ve been hearing a lot about the art “scene” and are not quite sure what it all

means, your best recourse is to turn to Vogue magazine. Here, anybody who is

anybody eventually turns up, either writing articles, being written about, or

serving as modest backgrounds for models disporting the latest fashions inspired

by the latest art. My view of the art world has been inestimably broadened by a

gift subscription to Vogue. For instance, I learned that the opening of Robert

Motherwell’s exhibition, which I had attended, was a “radiant family-of-art party”

and that that family — my own, presumably — included Governor and Mrs.

Rockefeller.100

One century after the Met statue’s debut at the Met Fifth Ave, Marble Statue of a Woman

received an invitation to 2003’s ‘Party of the Year,’ Goddess, a major exhibition sponsored by

Gucci and Conde Nast put on in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute from May 1-

August 3, 2003. The exhibition’s vision emphasized the presence and influence of classical dress

on art and fashion throughout the millennia and exhibited more than 200 objects featuring “loans

of vintage and contemporary designs from the international couture houses and private collectors

along with works from the permanent collection of The Costume Institute.”101 The dependency

of the exhibition upon visual culture’s ability to refer to the past and speak of the future102

exposes a resituating of the Met statue’s narrative to meet the superficial values of the art scene

in the twenty-first century. This dependence exploits the preferences of visual culture in a

twenty-first century viewing context by exhibiting modern fashion under the authority of the

classical past. It is because of this context of fame and glamour and the active consumption of

100 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 61:

Quote from art critic Dore Ashton (1966). 101 “Goddess,” Metropolitan Museum, Metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2003/goddess. 102 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 130.

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pop culture that the Met statue became cast as the valuable role of Themis (Goddess of Custom

and Law) in Goddess.103

The absurd references to popular culture and provocative language that summarize the

exhibition’s central narrative can’t help but hypnotically indulge an audience: “From the clothing

of ancient Greece to such modern evocations as Madame Grès' emblematic creations and

Versace's Neoclassical loincloths, classical dress has profoundly inspired and influenced art and

fashion through the millennia.”104 Organized in five parts by Curator-in-Charge of the Costume

Institute, Harold Koda, the 2003 exhibition was staged in five galleries: Mythic Details,

Pandora’s Box, The Metamorphoses, Pygmalion’s Galatea: Art to Life, and Ariadne's Thread:

From Classicism to Minimalism. Alongside images and samples of garments in a similar style,

Themis aids in demonstrating the transformation from classical dress to modern fashion in the

third gallery, The Metamorphoses.105 The location of the galleries that host the majority of the

objects in the Costume Institute greatly differs from Gallery 153. Therefore, larger pieces of

antique sculpture were included in the exhibition while remaining displayed in their usual

galleries as Goddess resonated throughout the entire structure, speaking to its relevance.

Although these larger works such as the Met statue were not exhibited among the

retrospective of gowns (Figures 21-22), Koda diffused the show from the Costume Institute to

Gallery 153 by supplemental wall text and images, as well as the rearrangement of smaller works

103 Harold Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), 91: In the

context of this exhibition, the Met statue is identified by the title Themis (Goddess of Custom and

Law), marble, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C. This particular identification of the work as

Themis differs from the title provided by the museum’s website identification of the figure as

Marble statue of a woman. 104 “Goddess to be Theme of Costume Institute's Spring 2003 Exhibition and Gala at

Metropolitan Museum,” accessed January 2020: Metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2003. 105 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 89.

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from antiquity.106 The collection of garments in this group offered an exploration of the basic

ancient garment types chiton, peplos, and himation (Figure 23) 107 and their variations. In the

context of Goddess, these variations are known to adjust the designs to “modify silhouettes and

individualize styles.”108 In the accompanying catalogue to the exhibition, Goddess: The Classical

Mode,109 Koda elaborates on the content and agenda of the works in The Metamorphoses:

Classical Transformations and Contemporary Permutations:

The richness and variety of the costumes represented in the ancient Greek art are

often the result of simple manipulations of the three basic garment types: the

chiton, the peplos, and the himation. Positioning a waist cinch or a shoulder

harness and removing a fibula introduced to the ancient wardrobe the possibility

of innumerable effects. Over time and through diverse artistic interpretations,

these variations have themselves been modified and metamorphosed into an even

greater diversity of effects. Still, the resulting garments retain their connotative

relationship to the original historical model.110

In this catalogue, Koda placed Themis among the gowns of young, enviable starlets from the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries that show the “subsequent connections and variations that

have occurred in the metamorphosis from marble and clay to fabric.”111 One recurring

connection observable in the garments of this strategically formed collection is the harness-like

structure, similar to the shoulder cord seen on Themis,112 providing one of the earliest examples

106 The difference in the lighting in the Costume Institute’s gallery and the gallery 153 may

further explain the separation in display for a single exhibition. The conservation of textiles is a

far more delicate science the conservation of marble, as materials such as the ones of the

garments in this show require low lighting for optimal preservation. 107 Figure 23: A diagram offering illustrations of the basic garment types that was displayed

among the wall text in the 2003 exhibition. 108 Metropolitan Museum, “Goddess to be Theme of Costume Institute's Spring 2003 Exhibition

and Gala at Metropolitan Museum,” 2003. 109 A book written by Koda and published by the Metropolitan Museum to coincide with the

exhibition. 110 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 89. 111 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, front-interior of book jacket. 112 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 91: “The harnessing of a chiton’s sleeves seen in this

Greek marble is often associated with Artemis. However, this figure’s more substantial, slightly

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of this style among this particular arrangement. Some easily detectable, or “potent,” evocations

of classical dress113 present themselves in Figure 24 and Figure 25. Figure 24, Two dresses, of

white mule (French, ca. 1810) and Figure 25, an illustration of Madame Grès114 by Jean Cocteau

(French, 1937). These garments offer visual examples of classical girdling and high Empire

waistlines resonate of the style presented by Themis. Figure 26, the Mariano Fortuny tea gown

(1920s), and Figure 27, Maggy Rouff’s evening gown (1939) demonstrate a discernible

awareness of classical forms and styles but without acknowledgement of or reference to any

specific imagery. These examples that make up the third gallery of Goddess obviously hint at a

“self-consciously staged classicism”115 in their portrayal of a generalized, and likely fictional,

idea of the classical image. Throughout the course of the exhibition, objects of authentic ancient

work begin to get left behind and the prevailing references to the classical origins of garments

become generic terminology for ancient Greek and Roman art.

The distant inclusion of ancient works like Themis or Eirene (Figure 28)116 aims to attest

to the art historical integrity of Goddess because of the authoritative persona maintained by the

classical past and the prevailing cultural tendency to romanticize the ancient world. Without

matronly form is the basis for an attribution of the sculpture’s subject as Themis, goddess of

custom and law. The artist sensitively rendered the surface of the wool himation and the linen

chiton to indicate the individual characteristics of the two textiles. Themis is girded above her

natural waist and a small distance below her bust. In later artistic representations of this classical

preference for a slightly raised waistline, the cinching migrated upward until it was immediately

under the breast in nineteenth-century neoclassical dress. Called the Empire waistline because of

its association with the dress styles of the Napoleonic period, this high waist came to be another

convention of classicizing fashion.” 113 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 95. 114 Madame Grès (1903-1993) was a couturier in the 20th century, known for using delicate

pleats which turned pieces of fabric into a posh echo of Greek sculpture. 115 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 131. 116 Eirene is a Roman copy of a lost Greek original in bronze and is displayed adjacent to Themis

in gallery 153.

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much further elaboration, Koda compared George Platt Lynes’ photograph of a silk evening

gown with a peplum (Figure 29) by Madame Grès to the look of a sculptural relief by “the

dramatic highlighting and moody silhouette.”117 Emphasis on elements of the photograph such as

setting, pose, and lighting demonstrate how this gown “substantiates the designer’s classicizing

intentions and antique sources,”118 more so than the gown’s actual physical features. With only a

sprinkling of actual antique works, the illusion of the exhibition’s deeply classical sensation

heavily relied upon strategic name-dropping,119 modern standards of beauty, and Hollywood’s

most willing and active participation. Undoubtedly, the fabrication of Goddess speaks to the

absolutely brilliant sleight of hand curation that engineered a prop-like function for Themis and

publicized the pursuit of “high art” as a fashionable endeavor.120 Anyone who has ever wrapped

themselves in a white sheet could identify traces of classical elements in clothing. It’s the glitz

and glamour of old Hollywood’s nostalgic beauty in black and white (Figure 30 and Figure 31)

with the unmatched glory of the silver screen evoked by the lingering elegance of the previous

wearer121 of the Two “Goddess” gowns (ca. 1972) in Figure 32 that makes for an intoxicating

display which gradually redefines the exhibition’s theme.

117 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 40. 118 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 40. 119 Generally, only the most well-known goddesses like Aphrodite/Venus, Artemis, and Nike

received notable billing in the show. Big contemporary names are prominently noted for their

status and contributions including the benefit’s co-chairs: creative director of Gucci Group, Tom

Ford, Academy Award-winning actress, Nicole Kidman, and editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna

Wintour. David Bowie and Diana Ross are additional Hollywood presences associated with the

exhibition’s opening. 120 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 61: “The

pursuit of “high art” is certainly fashionable.” 121 Loaned by The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, Gift of Lauren

Bacall (1924-2014).

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To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Benefit Gala,

also known and televised as the Met Gala, publicizes an opportunity given only to the

immortalized figures of the twenty-first century to “peer into the glass cases at items that they

had lent to the museum and see themselves as patrons rather than consumers.” 122 A review of the

exhibition and benefit from Washington Post, “What Becomes A ‘Goddess’ Most,” delivered the

most impactful line on the affair: “Everything became more than it was before it became part of

the exhibition. Except for the clothes.”123 It is not merely the influence of classical dress

throughout the centuries the exhibition so strongly tries to illuminate, but the culturally

transmitted erosion on the goddess ideal. Goddess perpetuates a timeless figure of iconic beauty,

unmatched elegance, and “a preternatural gorgeousness manufactured by a village of beauty

experts, cosmetic surgeons, photo retouchers and media advisers.”124 The twenty-first century

goddesses arrive at the Met Gala in an attempt to compete with the heavenly glamour that

Goddess blatantly idolizes. “The status of art as a commodity, or as an investment, whose

possession may increase the prestige and power of its owner obviously influences the way we

perceive art objects and the activity of artists.”125 Such status of art objects constitutes enviable

imagery like that of Goddess. As Berger states, “The state of being envied is what constitutes

glamour.”126

122 Robin Gavin, “What Becomes A ‘Goddess’ Most,” Washington Post, May 17, 2003,

Washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2003/05/17: “An exquisite dress by John Galliano for

Christian Dior, in metallic gold, is a clear descendant of the Greek himation. But this subtle point

is overwhelmed by the notation: Courtesy of Nicole Kidman. It is, at least on one night,

overwhelmed by the presence of Kidman herself, who along with designer Tom Ford and Vogue

editor Anna Wintour chaired the “Goddess” gala.” 123 Gavin, “What Becomes A ‘Goddess’ Most.” 124 Gavin, “What Becomes A ‘Goddess’ Most.” 125 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 65. 126 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 131.

46

The truly classical works, like Themis, have been continuously repurposed and re-

networked out of their original setting for use as pawns by vanity and prestige-seeking127

patrons, and “in much of the western world, that network today is a pretty significant one of

exhibitions.”128 It is in this repurposing that we see museums’ inclination to “select aspects of the

world, turning them into crafted exhibits, turning life into diction.”129 Goddess exemplifies this

manipulative re-networking in an unbalanced presentation of goddess identities. The power and

charisma of Themis is greatly overlooked in the context of the exhibition—a common occurrence

among the actual goddesses that made the cut. Such divine representations appear to be limited

to Aphrodite/Venus, Artemis, Nike or “other goddesses.”130 The manner and context in which

Goddess situates Themis substantiates the faculty of art in expressing cultural values and beliefs.

In her book Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces, author M. Elizabeth

Weiser states: “The ultimate terms chosen for an exhibit impose an order on the narrative and

hierarchy on its values; the terms signal a careful selection from among all possibilities and thus

they deflect as well as reflect certain attitudes.”131 The overriding message that a goddess is a

great beauty of an unattainable and immortal enigma that blessed Goddess with a feigned

lucidity is underscored by the “woman as object” subtext.132 Such an impression reveals a

disturbing ignorance of what many of the goddesses in the exhibition represent. A

hypersexualized and overly airbrushed image of a designer’s work that claims to deal with “the

127 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 65. 128 Janice Leoshko, “Art in the Himalayas,” Zoom Lecture at the University of Texas at Austin,

April 21, 2020. 129 M. Elizabeth Weiser, Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces, Penn

State University Press 2018, 9. 130 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 111. 131 Weiser, Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces, 77. 132 Gavin, “What Becomes A ‘Goddess’ Most.”

47

iconography of the female identity”133 seems out of touch when the majority of people who

identify as female cannot relate to it. However, the handling of Themis in this captivating show

of its time on centuries of artworks allows for a better “awareness of the context in which it

appears and constituting an objective form symbolizing essential values of that context.”134 The

warped reuse and publicizing of art objects justifies the multifaceted identity of Themis as a lens

into the evolving use of visual culture that is only activated upon our engagement. Themis in the

social and cultural setting of the 2003 exhibition reflects the following commentary in the

chapter “Art as Cultural Maintenance and as an Agent for Cultural Change:”

Art functions in culture to transmit the cultural heritage, maintain certain cultural

values, and urge change and improvement in others. Social phenomena affect art

content and style. Art can be used to express and reflect social status. It has

political and economic functions and reflects technological aspects of the culture.

Art also can be used for play and recreation.135

Remarkable how in any viewing context the Met statue exists, she is triumphant with this

unattainable grace that we cannot seem to match. Even when we are the ones determining what

that may look like, we still wait to receive our validation from her, for she exists as an agent for

the absorption and expression of cultural beliefs. Inclusion in Goddess denotes an additional

chapter of the Met statue’s history where her exposure and cultural value attest to her viewing

context’s aesthetical standards. The aesthetical standards throughout the Giustiniani restorations

and the Metropolitan’s removal of those additions established a desired level of beauty for décor

and sculpture which determined treatment of the statue and the significance viewers derived. In

the context of Goddess, that desired beauty is for human beings. It is not the statue itself but the

way we use and interact with it that transforms the marble into a mirror. What we see “may be

133 Koda, Goddess: The Classical Mode, 99. 134 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 51. 135 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 85.

48

obscure, or vulgar, but it reflects, and it in turn shapes, a vital social order.”136 The Met statue’s

centerfold-like treatment in the museum’s 2003 exhibit is a continuation of our tendencies to

project the cultural and social values our viewing context onto a piece of the past in order to

validate its significance and find meaning in our present moment.

136 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 55.

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Chapter Four: Marble Doll

At a point, in whatever ways are opened to us, we become concerned with

formulating our experience—with making sense of our life in this world. And it is

at this point that the attempts of other men become crucially important to us. It is

then that we recognize in art its power to give shape to human experience and to

present it in eloquent objective form. Art becomes significant for us as we

appreciate more and more how it differs from direct visual perception of the

actual world.137

Summer of 2020 and the year of the Metropolitan Museum’s 150th anniversary marked

the longest period of time the museum did not welcome visitors since its opening in 1870. The

institution announced a decision to close its doors to all three museum locations beginning

March 13, 2020, in an effort to support New York City’s attempts to halt the spread of COVID-

19.138 Plans to reopen the galleries by mid-summer quickly diminished, followed by the

cancellation of all tours, talks, concerts, and events through 2020 as the disquieting embrace of

COVID-19 tightened its grip on the globe causing the daily expansion of suffering, tragedy, and

corruptible losses. Remarkably, even in a period where the indefinite cessation of foot-traffic

plagued Gallery 153, viewer engagement with the Met statue and the rest of the collection

lingered on. The doors may have closed, but our interaction with art never stopped. This final

chapter presents a diverse collection of interactions and interpretations centered around the Met

statue created and shared by the museum and during the uncertain context of social isolation. The

interpretations this chapter presents emphasize how the meaning that viewers take away from the

Met statue is at the mercy of the viewing context and the distinctive experiences that form the

137 Donald L. Weismann, The Visual Arts as Human Experience, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall, 1974), 1. 138 Hrag VartanianVeken Gueyikian, “Dire Forecast from Metropolitan Museum Suggests

Closure Until July.” Hyperallergic, March 18, 2020. Hyperallergic.com/met-museum-forecast-

covid-19.

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lenses of those viewers. The array of visual forms that the Met statue actively inhabits since its

creation disclose a paradigmatic treatment of history to make sense of one’s present.

The following shared interactions with the statue communicate individual realities

through unique experiences, art, politics, humor, and cultural phenomena. These exchanges

reveal the projection of the cultural and social values of the twenty-first century onto the Met

statue. By allowing our dialogue to unfold within our present context as opposed to the context

of classical antiquity, we unveil an intimate and impactful way of seeing.

The restrictive viewing context of a pandemic emphasized the unconventional and

adaptable functionality of the Met statue, which determined the mode in which the public

engaged with the Late Classical figure. Gallery vacancy required the museum to provide an

abundance of online resources that allowed for the public, many of whom remained in quarantine

and city-wide lockdowns, to experience the collection through digital platforms such as

YouTube, Google Arts & Culture, Twitter, and Instagram. Each day in the life of COVID-19’s

looming threat over the United States, the Met continued to produce new online content available

to families and individuals with new ways to connect with art and each other. This includes the

virtual reality installation, the MET 360° Project, the MET blog, and video series/social media

initiative MET Stories. These online tools offer new experiences for visitors everywhere to

virtually tour some of the galleries, see artworks created in “extraordinary circumstances,”139 and

witness people’s unique museum experiences.

In “Catharsis,” the fifth episode from the MET Stories video series released on April 30,

2020, retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Michael Zacchea shares how his time spent in the

139 Jennifer Farrell, “Art for Extraordinary Circumstances,” metmuseum.org (Metropolitan

Museum of Art, May 15, 2020), Metmuseum.org/blogs/art-for-extraordinary-circumstances.

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ancient Greek and Roman art galleries aided in the healing process of his post-traumatic stress

after returning home from the Iraq War:

I started coming to the Met to the classical section and it started rebuilding me

spiritually. This is a truth about the human experience of war and war trauma. I

can come here and see mirrored in the broken statues my own body. It’s almost

like I’m experiencing catharsis. The sculptures are beautiful, but they are still

broken and that was a really important thing for me to come to understand

especially as it became apparent that physically I couldn’t do things that I had

once done. So, you have to come to sort of accept that about yourself and your

body and what your limitations are.140

Zacchea’s experience speaks to the authoritative power of art to help us process our own

realities.141 Possessing the means to rage, rejoice, or empathize with a work of art, in any

form, allows viewers to cultivate a personal connection with the work based on a familiar

experience or sensation they see reflected in the piece: “Stories are also important

because they are often the only way we know anything because something actually

happened to us, and perhaps even changed us accordingly.”142 When the viewing context

is one suspended in a time of unprecedented fear, it is the sensation of our own

experiences that mandates our interpretations of the work:

The art museum becomes important, not because of the monetary value of its

holdings, or even for the rarity and impressive quality of the works of art. The

works of art are seen to matter as manifestations of human experience,

aspirations, and wisdom.143

140 “Catharsis,” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020), Metmuseum.org/150/met-stories. 141 Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, Vintage, 1997: “The

healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my

sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music,

for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through

noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds

need to be taught to heal themselves.” 142 Whitaker, Museum Legs, 5. 143 Williams, “Honoring the Personal Response,” 95.

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Zacchea’s commentary on the unpacking of raw emotion with the aid of a visual narrative

demonstrates how the personal histories of spectators add immediacy to the viewing

experience and how that familiarity offers new perspectives that may enrich the content

of the works. Incorporating personal experiences and outside narratives with visual forms

creates a new mode of education with the potential for expanding the museum’s viewing

audience. “The spectator’s experience is helped toward formulation in terms of the

presented image, and the image is found to be meaningful in terms of the spectator’s

experience.”144

The museum began rapidly releasing episodes of MET Stories as the need for

entertainment in a nation stuck at home. At home, museum experiences required people to

compensate for the gap between themselves and creative content by making do with whatever

household items they had at their disposal to recreate a famous work of art. Families and

individuals began to share photographs of their interpretations of famous artworks—a much-

welcomed diversion from the dreary reality of the pandemic. As the phenomena grew, museums

started to take notice, and #MetTwinning became an internet sensation. Streams of people began

sharing their recreations of masterpieces, every day wishing for an appearance of their work on

the Met’s Instagram account (see Figure 33-34). An article reporting on the unusual trend of

restaging famous paintings remarked: “Don’t just look at the artwork, be the artwork and make it

yourself!”145 The challenge significantly increased exposure to museum collections worldwide

and invited participants to get a real thorough look at the works. Figure 34 presents an example

144 Weismann, The Visual Arts as Human Experience, 4. 145 Hakim Bishara, “The Internet Is Restaging Famous Paintings While Museums Are Closed,”

Hyperallergic, March 30, 2020, Hyperallergic.com/the-internet-is-restaging-famous-paintings-

while-museums-are-closed.

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of #MetTwinning with the Marble statue of a woman. If the Met restored the statue with a head

and a new set of arms, what items would she possess in 2020? This interpretation outfitted the

statue with the tools deemed necessary to navigate the suffocating cultural reality of her time. It

appears that the statue’s head, arms, and accompanying objects do not only hold the figure’s

identity but ours as well. The additional features that accessorized the Met statue after its

restoration in the Giustiniani collection and the removal of those features upon its display at the

Met reveal a centuries-long commentary between the sculpture and its viewers. Figure 34 and the

following interpretations in this chapter are nothing but a continuation of that ongoing narrative

between art and us. Is the Met statue a photo stand-in or a pillory? It depends on the viewer. “Art

is not always about pretty things. It’s about who we are, what happened to us, and how our lives

are affected.”146

Each interpretation or physical alteration to the Met statue is simply a viewer or a culture

coming up behind the sculpture and resting their chin on the empty space above the statue’s

shoulders. Further interpretations done in different mediums not only also serve as visual

references to the times but reveal the Met statue’s existence as similar to the customizable and

ever-shifting function of a paper doll—an observation made by the artist of Rock, Paper,

Scissors (Figure 35-36). The body of the Met statue is photoshopped onto a barefooted female

attendee at Woodstock in 1969. An unidentified bottle in the young woman’s outstretched hand

seems to aid her unsteady balance as she makes her way through the eclectic crowd. The work’s

title Rock, Paper, Scissors, reflects the medium of paper collage through which the artist chose to

experience the statue while the physical marble remained inaccessible. Figure 35 sets the tilted

146 GCC News, “‘Art Is Not Always about Pretty Things...” GCC #ArtToo Photography Show

May 28 – August 4, 2018.”

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female form among the Woodstock crowd underneath the words “We are one.” Transporting the

Met statue to the Summer of Love—a period recognized in history as intense social change and

people coming together in the name of peace, love, and freedom—reflects the “we’re all in this

together” rhetoric of the pandemic and the simultaneous nationwide responses to racial

injustices: “Art may become the basis for fostering social change, not merely by supporting and

giving expression to certain beliefs, but by representing the values of a particular social

movement as a distinct way of life.”147 Figure 36 situates the same figure on a concert poster

with various iconic images from the event collaged above the phrase “NO ONE ATTENDING

WILL EVER BE THE SAME.” A phrase that proved a truthful echo of the impact of the events

of 2020—a time easily as culturally defining as 1969 in the United States. The integration of

contexts of change and uncertainty in these works speaks to a pattern in cultural use of art during

realities of conflict:

Art is a product of what shapes us, our highest highs and lowest lows,

individually, and as a people. Perhaps most strongly in times of adversity, art lifts

us up, gives voice to the disenfranchised, and galvanizes the oppressed. Now in

this age of rampant mistrust and polarization the autonomy and power of art is of

the utmost importance, particularly in holding to account those who would seek to

quell it. Art too, can be fearless. Art too, can be a commanding force for political

change and social justice.148

Creative use of the Met statue in Figures 35-36 demonstrates the beloved practice of

taking snippets of several pasts and patching them together to comprehend or make a

statement on our present reality. It reminds us that our present turmoil does not last

forever. People and marble survived the same fear and uncertainty—even after suffering

breakage—and so shall we.

147 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 55. 148 GCC News, “‘Art Is Not Always about Pretty Things...” GCC #ArtToo Photography Show

May 28 – August 4, 2018.”

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A paper doll-like functionality of the Met statue also drove other methods of creation as

seen in the celestial interpretations, Hestia and Tempestas (Figures 37-38). The two images

maintain the same cloudy backgrounds and frontally positioned images of the Met statue with an

extended right arm. The figures’ identities are interchangeable by the heads and the additional

attributes representative of the goddess’s individual identities. An interchangeable goddess

whose identity derives from her symbolic attributes at the head and the hands originated in

ancient sculpture149 and as we know, the presence of those additions may often be crucial for a

definitive identification. These figures replicate that interchanging existence in a stylized manner

by the sun-kissed bust accompanied by flames to identify Hestia, goddess of hearth and home,

and the interstellar blues accompanied by lightning to identify Tempestas, goddess of storms.

Figure 39, titled Eye of the Beholder, confirms the customizable persona of the Met statue

through collage by positioning an eye as the head the statue among a beautiful botanical

background which is mirrored within the eye on the figure. Our ability to completely reinvent the

life, form, and identity of the Met statue—not only in these interpretations but in the Giustiniani

Collection and at the Metropolitan Museum—exposes the conspicuous means by which we find

significance in our viewing context. Just as paper dolls reflected and often reinforced the cultural

beliefs regarding the social role of women,150 these Met statue interpretations reflect the social

and cultural values by the method in which we view them and find relevance by validating these

viewers’ creative freedom and particular situations.

149 The heads and sometimes arms of ancient marble sculptures were often carved separately and

then attached to the figure. 150 “History of Paper Dolls and Popular Culture,” National Women's History Museum,

November 20, 2016, Womenshistory.org/articles/history-paper-dolls-and-popular-culture.

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Lady Justice (Figure 40) and Sister Suffragette (Figure 41) offer two digitally rendered

interpretations with inspiration derived from the social and political climate of their context.

These two figures reflect the intensified spotlight on prominent issues such as gender inequality

and racial injustices intensified by the 2020 election, as well as the ability of art to “…create

awareness of social issues.”151 The reflection of this social and political commentary by mode of

the Met statue demonstrates spectators from the twenty-first century taking an image from

antiquity and resituating it to articulate—not only their viewing context—but their individual

social and cultural values, consequently, giving their viewing experience a more tailored

significance.

Additional creative accounts that apply a preexisting knowledge of ancient Greek

sculpture and mythology—alongside the seemingly lasting cultural ideal of a beauty so powerful

or divine that it is worth documenting—to reintroduce an idea discussed in the previous chapter:

goddess equals sex symbol. Figure 42 presents the Met statue as 1966 Playmate of the Year by

editing the statue as the body of the model on the cover of an issue of Playboy magazine. Titled

Beauty Standard, the magazine cover shines a spotlight on the sculpture positioned centerstage,

the statue’s figure casting a shadow shaped as the Playboy bunny icon. Eartha (Figure 43)

portrays the statue as the body of pop icon, Eartha Kitt. Rendered in right profile, the figure’s

bare left leg extends forward from the stone as the statue’s bended right leg balances her mid

musical performance. Not only do these two artworks comment on the contemporary idea of a

goddess as an unattainable beauty only attainable by those who fit the exclusionary standards of

attractiveness manufactured by culture and society. A goddess is only a goddess if she fits the

male gaze, and the words “ENTERTAINMENT FOR MEN” printed on the magazine cover in

151 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 53.

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Figure 42 make sure to confirm this. But also, these images remind us of our own unjustified

standards of beauty to which we hold ancient sculpture. Many viewers of an ancient art suffer

from ruin-lust and elevate the broken, white marble sculptures as monumental graves for the

intelligence and sophistication of past civilizations. We forget that sculptures such as the Met

statue once stood fully intact, painted in vivid colors because of the replicable beauty. A 2017

essay titled “Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color” states: “The equation

of white marble with beauty is not an inherent truth of the universe; it’s a dangerous construct

that continues to influence white supremacist ideas today.”152 Figures 42-43 acknowledge a

sustained way of seeing that brutally enforces false standards of beauty not only for art and

history but people, consequently, confirming the establishment of art as a method of

“communication and cultural statement without which culture and progress would not be

possible.”153 Transferring the Met statue onto an easily identifiable subject allows for a viewing

experience that is not restricted to the ancient past but instead pulls the ancient past throughout

history to our present moment while asking us to consider a different path for the future.

The last rendition this chapter presents of the Met statue reworks imagery from the

previously discussed exhibition Goddess to present a new personification of the sculpture that

illuminates her survival through metamorphosis. Figure 44 presents a photoshopped body of the

Met statue onto the form of the model wearing Grès’ evening gown in Figure 29. The figure

coyly extends pieces of sheer chiffon above her head. She begins to fade into an overcast but

graceful silhouette at the shoulders until her head nearly melts into a fictional haze of delicate

152 Jillian Steinhauer, “Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color,”

Hyperallergic, June 7, 2017, Hyperallergic.com/why-we-need-to-start-seeing-the-classical-

world-in-color. 153 Chalmers, Towards a Theory of Art and Culture as a Foundation for Art Education, 34.

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fabric and cigarette smoke. The awareness of the original photograph’s emphasis on the white

evening gown makes for playful commentary when replaced by ancient marble—bare of all

color for so long that it is now idolized for its particular shade of pale. The feigned anonymity of

the model in her reluctance to look directly at the viewer feels comparable to the efforts of

research trying to uncover visual evidence of the Met statue’s identities. Perfectly fragmented in

all the right places, the statue is now viewable in a complete enigmatic form—a form unique to

the time, the culture, and the vision through which we experience it. Our unique methods of

engagement in the ancient dialogue with the Met statue—and all art of the past—is the only

source from which we may derive significance because the lens of our context focuses on our

individual interactions and interpretations, eliciting a more immediate and impactful experience.

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”154

Of course, interacting with the Met statue by creative means or through the eyes of

another human being is not conclusive of the work’s historical significance or what it expresses

about the trajectory of art history that is built on artificial standards for visual material and

borrowed time. Berger explains, “We are not claiming that to cut out a magazine reproduction of

an archaic Greek head, because it is reminiscent of some personal experience, and to pin it on to

a board beside other disparate images, is to come to terms with the full meaning of that

head.”155 It is the unique meaning that we are able to extract from works of art that sustains the

act of looking as a method for social, cultural, and historical enlightenment. If we could not

apply art of the past to our own experience in whatever circumstances we are seeing it from, then

the discipline of art history would not exist. The past is only the past and it is restricted to itself.

154 Siobhan Kukolic, “We See Them as We Are,” HuffPost (HuffPost, May 5, 2017),

Huffpost.com: Quote from Memoirist Anais Nin. 155 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 31.

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It is not until human beings with a perpetual thirst for meaning interact with the past and produce

history. Sustainable vision does not require an insular perspective:

If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use,

confer a new kind of power. Within it we could begin to define our experiences

more precisely in areas where words are inadequate. (Seeing comes before

words.) Not only personal experience, but also the essential historical experience

of our relation to the past: that is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning

to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become active

agents.156

Art has always been about life. It’s why it exists, why it’s never gone away, and why we look to

it. If the value of art relied on historical value and nothing more, it would not have continued to

capture audiences for centuries. The true value that sustains the study, creation, and viewing of

art is connection. A connection to the past, to each other, to culture, and to ourselves. We find

humanity within art history, and we can’t take our eyes off it. History is written but the

significance of art that remains exists in the eye of the beholder, not just the context.

Dialogue we exchange with art of the past cannot help but veil the original context of

such works and shape the way we see and interpret them. “We tend to project life and expression

onto the arrested image and supplement from our own experience what is not actually

present.”157 Our interactions with art history, as presented in each chapter cast a shadow upon the

intended identity of the figure in the form of our own social and cultural values. Our ability to

see ourselves, project our values, or accept our reality is done through this ancient exchange, and

in that discourse, art is just another dimension of our reality (see Figure 45). We engage with the

ruins of past civilizations because our own ruin is compulsory.

156 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 33. 157 E. H. Gombrich, Julian E. Hochberg, and Max Black, Art, Perception, and Reality

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 17.

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Conclusion

Many think it a tragedy that comprehension of our present reality is only achievable after

we experience it. The incredibly colorful existence of one of the Metropolitan Museum’s many

marble statues is a reminder of the active role we must fulfill to sustain the viewing and

historical substance of art from the past. Art history is participatory. Confining viewer

engagement with a work of art to the context of its creation leaves the Met statue with a

mysterious, barren history with which we cannot effectively connect. Luckily, the Met statue’s

audience never stopped finding significance because of the preexisting lens that is our context

shaping our vision.

Seventeenth century restoration of the statue for the Giustiniani collection reflects the

ideas and tastes of a rapidly influential period in artistic creation and aesthetical tastes. The Met’s

acquisition and removal of restorations reveal a treatment of the statue rationalized by the

ambiguous museum standards of the early twentieth century and the urgency to collect art that

“sells.” Inclusion and exploitation of the statue’s figure and divine implications in the 2003 Met

gala and exhibit, Goddess, reinforced the ability of art to act as a status symbol while divulging

the myth of Hollywood beauty as an unattainable commodity. Isolated interaction with the Met

statue during the museum’s 2020 pandemic closure elicited experiences intensely defined by the

public’s stranded reality that guided individual interpretations.

The reception of the Met statue in each documented period of its life is demonstrative of

the social and cultural values of each of those contexts. “Meanwhile, we live not just our own

lives but the longings of our century.”158 We live in a particularly promising time for art history,

archaeology, and museum studies that breeds an appreciation and understanding for the necessity

158 Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 67.

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of an object’s original context. Original historical and cultural context is crucial for an accurate,

all-encompassing understanding of any object of the past. We must acknowledge, however, that

the viewing contexts post-creation are applicable parts of an object’s existence. For we do not

define ourselves by only the first decade of our lives. As this research’s discussion on each

viewing scenario of the Met statue supports, it is the context in which we experience the Met

statue that determines its meaning and significance in relation to our own existence and our place

in history. Reception and treatment of the Met statue arises from the lens that veils the specific

viewing setting of the sculpture which determines the work’s reception and treatment in that

moment. Cultural and social values, phenomena, and preexisting ideas of art form the makeup of

that lens:

Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as through a lens. This lens

is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the

temporal and the timeless.

If we storytellers are Death’s Secretaries, we are so because, in our brief mortal

lives, we are the grinders of these lenses.159

As I said in the first chapter of this research: It is the past that carried the Met statue into

our present reality and the past that we are actively creating through our interactions with history

that will sustain the transfer of the ancient past to the future whether it is through our research or

our ruins. Perhaps the centuries-long dialogue between the Met statue and its generations of

audiences illuminates the swelling need to focus less on the curation of our past and more on the

renewal of our present by nurturing the course of our future. Therefore, let us look to the future

while keeping an eye on the past as it has on us.

159 Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, 31.

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Figures

Figure 1. “Arts Awareness, 1972 | From the Vaults,” 1972, documentary film (7:30), YouTube,

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 2020. Metmuseum.org/150/from-the-vaults.

63

Figures 2-3. “Arts Awareness, 1972 | From the Vaults,” 1972, documentary film (9:28-9:30),

YouTube, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 2020. Metmuseum.org/150/from-the-

vaults.

64

Figure 4. Marble statue of a woman, Late Classical, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C., marble,

overall (H. w/ plinth): 68 1/8 in. (173 cm) H. (H. without plinth): 66 1/8 in. (168 cm), Greek,

Metropolitan Museum, New York, Metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/themis.

65

Figure 5. Marble statue of a woman, Late Classical, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C., marble,

overall (H. w/ plinth): 68 1/8 in. (173 cm) H. (H. without plinth): 66 1/8 in. (168 cm), Greek,

Metropolitan Museum, New York.

66

Figure 6. Marble statue of a woman, Late Classical, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C., marble,

overall (H. w/ plinth): 68 1/8 in. (173 cm) H. (H. without plinth): 66 1/8 in. (168 cm), Greek,

Metropolitan Museum, New York, Metmuseum.org/art/collection/themis.

67

Figure 7. Marble statue of a woman (detail), Late Classical, 2nd half of the 4th century B.C.,

marble, overall (H. w/ plinth): 68 1/8 in. (173 cm) H. (H. without plinth): 66 1/8 in. (168 cm),

Greek, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

68

Figure 8. Map of the MET Fifth Avenue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,

maps.metmuseum.org.

69

Figure 9. The Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery in The Greek and Roman Galleries, The

Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, March 2020.

Figure 10. Gallery 153, Interior del Metropolitan Museum of Art de Nueva York (Seth

Wenig/AP), Lavanguardia.com/cultura.

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Figure 11. Figure of a Goddess (Marble statue of a woman), Late Classical, 2nd half of the 4th

century B.C., marble, overall (H. w/ plinth): 68 1/8 in. (173 cm) H. (H. without plinth): 66 1/8 in.

(168 cm), Greek, 1906 photograph, Metropolitan Museum, New York, "The Giustiniani

Marbles." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 1, no. 6 (1906).

71

Figure 12. Chairestratos, Themis, 3rd century BCE., marble sculpture, Ethnikon Archaiologikon

Mouseion (Greece), inv. 231., Library.artstor.org.

72

Figure 13. Fig. 330. “Nike of Brescia,” and Fig. 331. Themis, from Rhamnous, black and white

photographs, Gisela M. A. Richter, The sculpture and sculptors of the Greeks, Metropolitan

Museum, New York, 1950, 454.

73

Figure 14. Reconstruction of the cult statue of Nemesis of Rhamnous on her relief decorated

base, showing Helene, Leda, Nemesis, and others by Agorakritos of Paros, scan, drawing after

Despines (statue) and Petrakos 1986, 92 (base), Smith, Amy C. Polis and Personification in

Classical Athenian Art. Leiden, MA: Brill, 2011.

74

Figure 15. Thasos, Winged Nemesis, inv. no. 58 (G. Aristodemou), fourth century BC, “Mars

Victor, Victoria and Nemesis Invicta. Three votive reliefs from the ancient theatre on Philippi

(Kavala) reconsidered,” in Dr. Cristina-Georgeta Alexandrescu (Ed), Cult and Votive

Monuments in the Roman Provinces. Proceedings of the XIIIth International Colloquium on

Roman Provincial Art (2015), Researchgate.net.

75

Figure 16. Statue of Themis (front view), ca. 350-325 BCE, 4th century BCE, image: Fall 1974,

torso, marble sculpture, Athens, Agora Museum, Library.artstor.org.

76

Figure 17. The Greek Collection, 120 Marble Statues, (d.), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New

York, N.Y.), and Gisela M. A. Richter. Handbook of the Greek Collection. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1953, 280.

77

Figure 18. 1930’s photograph of the courtyard at Palazzo Giustiniani, “…il vestibolo a destra una

fota anni trenta del cortile,” Giustiniani.info/palazzo.

78

Figure 19. Plate 20, engraving, 1640, Galleria giustiniana del marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani,

1640.

79

Figure 20. Plate 453, Abundance, (827), print, 1816, Laurent, Henri, Ennio Quirino Visconti,

Guizot François, and Clarac Frédéric. Le Musée Royal, publié Par Henri Laurent, ... Ou Recueil

De Gravures D'apres Les plus Beaux Tableaux, Statues Et Bas-Reliefs De La Collection Royale,

Avec Description Des Sujets, Notices littéraires Et Discours Sur Les Arts, Paris: Impr. de P.

Didot l'ainé.

80

Figures 21-22. Costume Institute (New York, N.Y.). 2003. Goddess: [installation photographs,

wall text] the classical mode, May 1 - August 3, 2003, 81: Libmma.contentdm.oclc.org.

81

Figure 23. Definitions, Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda, Metropolitan Museum, New

York, 2003: 218.

82

Figure 24. French, two dresses, white mull, ca. 1810, The Costume Institute, Goddess: The

Classical Mode, Harold Koda, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 94.

83

Figure 25. Madame Grès, French (1903-1993), evening gown, black chiffon, 1937. Illustration

by Jean Cocteau, French (1889-1963). Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda,

Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 97.

84

Figure 26. Mariano Fortuny, Italian (born Spain 1871-1949), evening gown, pale-pink pleated

silk with pink silk cord and glass beads, 1920s. Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda,

Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 129.

85

Figure 27. Maggy Rouff, French (1896-1971), evening gown, white, silver and gold lamé, 1939.

Photograph by George Hoyningen-Huene, Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda,

Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 130.

86

Figure 28. Eirene, Daughter of Zeus and Themis, Roman copy of a Greek original of the 4th

century B.C., marble, Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda, Metropolitan Museum, New

York, 2003: 30.

87

Figure 29. Dress: Madame Grès, French (1903-1993). Evening Gown with peplum, silk jersey,

1940, photograph: George Platt Lynes, American (1907-1955), gelatin silver print, 1940.

Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 40.

88

Figure 30. Gilbert Adrian, American (1903-1959), evening gown, ivory silk chiffon embroidered

with beads and rhinestones, 1946. Photograph of Marlene Dietrich, Goddess: The Classical

Mode, Harold Koda, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 187.

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Figure 31. Mariano Fortuny, Italian (born Spain 1871-1949), evening gown, hand-dyed pleated

silk, 1923. Photograph by James Abbe (1883-1973) of Natasha Rambova, wife of Rudolph

Valentino. Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda, Metropolitan Museum, New York,

2003: 174.

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Figure 32. Halston (Roy Halston Frowick), American (1932-1990), Two “Goddess” gowns, ca.

1972. Left: blue silk jersey; right: brown silk jersey. Lent by Museum at The Fashion Institute of

Technology, New York, Gift of Lauren Bacall. Goddess: The Classical Mode, Harold Koda,

Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2003: 83.

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Figure 33. Screenshot of a post from the Metropolitan Museum’s Instagram page.

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Figure 34. #MetTwinning with Marble statue of a woman featuring face mask, Mac &

other hot commodities, photograph, 2020.

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Figure 35. Lisa Davis, Rock, Paper, Scissors, mixed media, 2020.

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Figure 36. Lisa Davis, Rock, Paper, Scissors II, mixed media, 2020.

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Figure 37. Hannah van Meter, Hestia, mixed media, 2020.

96

Figure 38. Hannah van Meter, Tempestas, mixed media, 2020.

97

Figure 39. Kaci van Meter, Eye of the Beholder, mixed media, 2020.

98

Figure 40. Gordito, Mother Justice, mixed media, 2020.

99

Figure 41. Lloyd and Heather van Meter, Sister Suffragette, mixed media, 2020.

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Figure 42. Hannah van Meter, Beauty Standard, mixed media, 2020.

101

Figure 43. Hannah van Meter, Eartha, mixed media, 2020.

102

Figure 44. Abigail Davis, Nikita Sveshnikov, Tangled Up in Hues, digital image of the

Metropolitan Marble statue of a woman photoshopped onto the figure modeling the 1940

evening gown by Madame Grès, 2020.

103

Figure 45. Lynda Barry, How to Look at Art, 2016.

104

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