The collections of the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University span the globe and the centuries. Housed in a distinguished building by renowned architect Michael Graves, the Carlos maintains the largest collection of ancient art in the Southeast with objects from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Near East, and the ancient Americas. The Museum is also home to collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century sub-Saharan African art and European and American works on paper from the Renaissance to the present day.

The Carlos Museum works with Emory faculty members to develop unique special exhibitions that draw on collections from around the world to engage the public and contribute to current scholarship. The Museum also mounts exciting traveling exhibitions developed by other institutions and makes them available to its community.

February 9 - August 31, 2008

Lost Kingdoms of the Nile: Nubian Treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Organized by by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in conjunction with the Carlos Museum, Lost Kingdoms of the Nile features some of the most significant archaeological treasures ever found in Africa. This monumental exhibition—consisting of over 250 objects in gold, silver, bronze, ivory, stone, and ceramic ranging in date from 7000 B.C. to modern times—provides unprecedented insight into ancient Nubia, the extraordinary African civilization that has often been overshadowed by ancient Egypt.

Ancient Nubia thrived from 6000 BC to 350 AD in what is today southern Egypt and northern Sudan. The exhibition highlights not only some of the finest artworks ever found in ancient Africa but also the remarkable stories of their discovery by the intrepid archaeologists who were part of the Harvard-Boston Expedition from 1913 to 1932.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• An exquisite golden royal diadem, which will be reconstructed in its entirety for the
first time.

• Finely crafted ceramics, including some of the earliest pottery in the world.

• Treasures from the royal Nubian tombs, including part of an army of shawabti
figurines buried to work for the Nubian kings who ruled over the areas of both modern-day Egypt and the Sudan.

• Inscriptions in the mysterious language of Nubia.

February 9, 2008

Galleries of Sub-Saharan African Art Open

The Museum announces the re-opening of the galleries of Sub-Saharan African art. Drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, recent acquisitions, and loans from private collections, the galleries are organized around three themes: Art for all to see, Art for the few, and Art that is performed. These themes will provide context about the original display and function of these object in Africa. The first section features a cross-cultural display of African masks, with video clips to illustrate the role of the mask as part of a larger costume and performance. Also included are objects intended to be private, such as those made to commemorate the dead. Secular art, generally made to be seen in public to communicate ideas about status, wealth and identity are featured, as well as exquisitely carved objects that were intentionally made as art-for-art's sake, a practice that became popular with African artists during the colonial period.

Special Exhibitions: Upcoming

March 8 - June 29, 2008

Cultivating America: Visions of the Landscape in Twentieth-century Prints

American life as experienced through the land is the focus of the exhibition Cultivating America: Visions of the Landscape in Twentieth-century Prints, which opens in the John Howett Works on Paper Study Room on March 8, 2008. Twenty-six works dating from 1928 to 1946 by eighteen artists will be on display. Their individual visions of the American landscape range in tone from the nostalgic to the heroic and celebratory to a grim realism. Each of the artists in this exhibition viewed the landscape as a key to the American character, a source of identity and an apt metaphor for the people who lived closely tied to it.  Some artists, such as Asa Cheffetz, present an idyllic view in landscapes that show human activity in harmony with nature. His crisp wood engravings depict a peaceful rural life that recalls an earlier, simpler time. Others depicted the harsh conditions in the era of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Georges Schreiber’s lithograph, I Raise Turkeys and Chickens, for example, records a worn but resolute farm woman who might have stepped from the pages of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. 

Cultivating America: Visions of the Landscape in Twentieth-century Prints includes works from the Michael C. Carlos Museum’s permanent collection as well as several loans from the collection of Carl W. and Marian Mullis. 

Image: Georges Schreiber (born Brussels, Belgium, 1904 - died New York, New York, 1977)
I Raise Turkeys and Chickens. ca. 1942. Lithograph. Gift of Carl and Marian Mullis. 2000.17.1

November 15, 2008 - May 22, 2009

Wonderful Things: The Harry Burton Photographs
and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun

The tomb of Tutankhamun is one of the most famous archaeological finds of all time. When discovered in 1922, the tomb was filled with spectacular artifacts including gold-covered chariots, elaborately carved alabaster vessels, inlaid furniture, a vast array of jewelry, and the famed gold mask. Every step of the archaeologists' painstakingly detailed work in and around the tomb was documented through photography, one of the first large-scale excavations to be so thoroughly recorded. The dramatic and artistic images clearly convey the excitement and the tension of the work, indeed, many of the photos have become as famous as the artifacts themselves.

The clearance of the tomb took ten years, and in that time, photographer Harry Burton took more than 1400 large format black and white images. The photographs in the exhibition document the Valley of the Kings, the initial discovery of the tomb, the dramatic moment when the excavators first glimpsed the dazzling array of artifacts, the entry to the burial chamber, the series of shrines and coffins that protected the king, and the king's mummy, wreathed in floral collars and bedecked with gold jewelry.

Harry Burton (1879-1940) was an accomplished archaeological photographer who began working in Egypt in 1910. In 1914, he joined the staff of the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, Burton's services were loaned to the British team. Two sets of Burton negatives exist, one in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the other with Howard Carter's papers now in the Griffith Institute, Oxford, UK. The prints to be exhibited at the Carlos are being loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Griffith Institute.

The prints to be exhibited at the Carlos are being loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Griffith Institute. The exhibition consists of over 50 photographs with explanatory labels, wall panels that discuss the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, the early use of photography in archaeology, the photographic career of Harry Burton, and how the photographs fueled the public relations campaign of the excavators and spawned the myth of the curse of Tutankhamun. The show will be complimented with additional artifacts discovered by Howard Carter in his excavations in the Valley of the Kings and will shed light on the search for Tutankhamun's tomb and the secret of its discovery.

This exhibition will compliment Tutankamun, The Golden King and The great Pharaohs to be shown at the Atlanta Civic Center. Together, the Golden King exhibition and the companion exhibition of Harry Burton photos will highlight Emory's strengths in the study of ancient Egyptian art and culture as part of the "Egypt at Emory" initiative.

January 24 - June 8, 2008: Columbia Museum of Art

June 28 - November 2, 2008: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

March 14 - June 14, 2009: University of Kentucky Art Museum

The Michael C. Carlos Museum is sharing its critically acclaimed exhibition with a national audience. The exhibition, organized by Carlos Museum curator Dr. Peter Lacovara from the holdings of the historic Petrie Museum in London, will visit several venues through 2008. In addition, the Carlos Museum-published companion catalogue will be available at each venue.

The exhibition invites you to experience the adventurous spirit of the early days of Egyptian archaeology through the discoveries of British pioneer and "the Father of Modern Archaeology," Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). More than 200 objects drawn from the London museum named for the legendary figure are featured, including one of the world's earliest surviving dresses (ca. 2400 BC), mysterious mummy portraits, and royal art from the pharaoh Akhenaten's famous city at Amarna. Rare archival photos and documents illustrate Petrie's brilliant innovations, which continue to inspire and inform great discoveries.