She stands not much more than a foot tall, a figure with flounced drapery made of terracotta and covered in polychrome decoration that gives vitality to her dress and features. Created during the fourth or third century BCE in Central Greece, she is to modern eyes an example of idealized beauty from the ancient world. In her original context, her role may have been more subversive, capturing nuances of self-expression through clothing and adornment.
She is part of a group of so-called Tanagra figurines discovered in the 1870s, which played an influential role in the reception of classical antiquity during this time. Their portability allowed artists, among others, to study them and trace their forms. This included the American artist James McNeill Whistler, who created numerous works that were inspired by the form, underscoring a key notion of history that ideas permeate across cultures and time, influencing and inspiring.
The exhibition Recasting Antiquity: Whistler, Tanagra, and the Female Form is an important collaboration between the Art History Department and the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University. The exhibition highlights two key roles the Carlos serves as a university museum: It supports the research interests of faculty through the use of its collections for study and its unique ability within the university to bring objects together from museums across the world, and it provides a public face for the work of the university. This exhibition and its related public programs allow audiences to see firsthand the type of original research that faculty and staff in the university undertake.
I would like to thank Dr. Linda Merrill, teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Art History Department, for providing the inspiration for this exhibition. Without her personal research interest in this topic, this exhibition would not have taken place. I thank in equal measure Dr. Ruth Allen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Carlos, for her work as co-curator of the exhibition. In her capacity as expert in ancient art, she selected the ancient Greek objects to include in the exhibition, and in her capacity as a museum curator, she skillfully mediated the ideas into a form that the public can see and understand with clarity and purpose.