An exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts and the British Museum

Eternal Egypt

Masterworks of Ancient Art from The British Museum

January 27 to May 22, 2005

Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion

It is being presented by the American Express Foundation in co-operation with METRO and the Volunteer Association of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, January 27 to May 22, 2005. The installation at the Museum has been conceived by Nathalie Bondil, Chief Curator, and Christiane Michaud, scenic designer, in collaboration with Ronald Leprohon, professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto.

No ancient civilization has left a larger or more varied artistic legacy than Egypt, yet exhibitions of Egyptian art have traditionally emphasized its importance as historical documentation rather than as an extraordinary flowering of art. Eternal Egypt will be the first major exhibition to take an art-historical approach to this great culture, and the first in this country to be drawn solely from the British Museum’s collection of Egyptian antiquities. Famous masterpieces and little-known treasures will provide an overview of the richness and scope of this outstanding collection.

Selected by guest curator Edna R. Russmann of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, New York, who has collaborated closely with the staff of this department and especially with Nigel Strudwick, the almost one hundred and fifty objects in the exhibition will span the full range of Pharaonic history, from shortly before the First Dynasty, about 3100 B.C., to the Roman occupation of the fourth century A.D. The works will be arranged chronologically to reveal the development of Egyptian art over thirty-five centuries. The four periods into which ancient Egyptian history is divided – the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom and the Late Period – will form the underlying structure of the exhibition. Within each section, the unique and innovative aspects of the period’s art, as well as its characteristic styles, forms and genres, will be demonstrated.

For more information about the exhibit please visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts web site.