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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Classical Archaeology & Art: Museums

On Campus

Krannert Art Museum

The Krannert Art Museum is the second largest general fine art museum in the state of Illinois, with over 10,000 works of art spanning the past 5,000 years. It operates within the University of Illinois's College of Fine and Applied Arts. Krannert's Ancient Mediterranean Gallery includes artwork from Egypt, Iran, Greece, and Rome, with strong collections of ancient Greek pottery and Roman sculpture and glass.   

 

Spurlock Museum

With a collection of over 50,000 artifacts, the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures originated with the Museum of Classical Archaeology and Art, which the University of Illinois established in 1911.  The Workman Gallery of Ancient Mediterranean Cultures highlights the Museum's strong collections in this area, and its ongoing commitment to the study of Classical civilization.    

Other U.S. Collections

Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute’s Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art showcases the origins and early development of Western art from the dawn of the third millennium BC to the time of the great Byzantine Empire. It includes examples of Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and Egyptian sculpture in stone, clay, and bronze, as well as coins, glass, jewelry, vases, and mosaics of outstanding quality and interest. 

 

J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles)

J. Paul Getty started acquiring antiquities in Rome in 1939 and subsequently built an important collection concentrating on Greek and Roman marble statues and reliefs, bronze statuettes, and mosaics. Curators added significantly to the collection, which now includes important Greek vases, engraved gems, Romano-Egyptian mummy portraits, ancient glass, carved ambers, silver vessels, and gold jewelry. The Getty also provides online resources on its collections of ancient lamps, Greek bronzes, and Roman mosaics.

 

Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (University of Michigan) 

The finds from excavations sponsored by the University of Michigan in Egypt and the Near East constitute the majority of the objects in the Kelsey Museum, most of them dating to the Roman period. In most cases, the original excavation records are also stored at the Museum. In addition,the Museum contains a representative collection of Classical, Egyptian, and Near Eastern objects, dating from the Neolithic period to the Middle Ages, and an important collection of archival photographs. 

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)

One of the world's largest art museums, the Met holds tens of thousands of objects from the ancient Mediterranean, concentrated in its Departments of Ancient Near Eastern Art, Greek and Roman Art, and Egyptian Art.  

 

Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)

The Museum of Fine Arts is home to one of the world’s premiere collections of antiquities, featuring more than 85,000 works of art from Egypt, Nubia, the Near East, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, and Anatolia. Special strengths of the collection are Old Kingdom Egyptian art, Nubian art of all periods, Greek vases, Classical coins and gems, and Roman funerary art and imperial portraiture.

 

Oriental Institute Museum (University of Chicago)

The Oriental Institute Museum is a showcase of the history, art and archaeology of the ancient Near East. An integral part of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, which has supported research and archaeological excavation in the Near East since 1919, the Museum exhibits major collections of antiquities from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and Anatolia.

 

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The Collections of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum comprise some 34,000 objects of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Cypriot, and Bronze Age Aegean origins, as well as small numbers of artifacts from related culture areas.

 

Walters Art Museum (Baltimore)

The Walters' collection of 36,000 items includes one of the largest assemblages of ancient art in the United States, with galleries devoted to Ancient Egypt and Nubia, Ancient Greece, the Ancient Near East, and the Roman Empire.

International Collections

Acropolis Museum

The Acropolis Museum is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built to house every artifact found on the rock and on the surrounding slopes, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Greece.

 

Berlin State Museums

The Berlin State Museums are the largest complex of museums in Europe and include the Antikensammlung and the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, each among the world's most significant collections of Classical and Egyptian antiquities.

 

British Museum

The Department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. These mostly range in date from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3200 BC) to the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century AD, with some pagan survivals.

 

Capitoline Museums

The Capitoline Museums is a single museum containing a group of art and archaeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy.

 

Louvre Museum

The Louvre is the world's largest art museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. The museum encompasses designated departments of Egyptian Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; and Near Eastern Antiquities.  

 

National Archaeological Museum, Athens

The National Archaeological Museum is the largest museum in Greece and one of the most important in the world. Originally destined to receive all the 19th century excavations, mainly from Attica and other parts of the country, it gradually took the form of a central National Archaeological Museum and was enriched with finds from all parts of the Greek world. His rich collections, enumerating more than 11,000 exhibits, offer the visitor a panorama of ancient Greek culture from the prehistory to the late antiquity.

 

National Archaeological Museum, Naples

The National Archeological Museum is one of the most ancient and important museums for the abundance and uniqueness of its heritage and for the contribution it offered the European cultural survey.

 

Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums contain masterpieces of painting, sculpture and other works of art collected by the popes through the centuries.