Collecting the Ancient Near East at The Met

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the only museum in the United States with a curatorial department solely dedicated to ancient Near Eastern art. Many U.S. museums hold objects that belong to this classification, and collections can be found at art museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They also exist in university teaching museums like the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum), and the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East—all with vast collections of ancient Near Eastern material culture. The Met, however, stands alone in the breadth and depth of such a collection Collecting the Ancient Near East at The Met