This year marks the passage of a century and a half since the arrival at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College of one of its most prized possessions in the realm of art and culture: the Assyrian reliefs, currently on display in the Kim Gallery of the Hood. Originally part of the decorative scheme of the so-called Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE) in Nimrud, Iraq, these six large-scale reliefs depict a ritual performance undertaken by the king among both human and supernatural beings.
A special installation about the reliefs and other ancient Near Eastern works from the collection is on view in the Hood and will include special interactive three-dimensional computer reconstructions by Learning Sites, Inc., presenting the reliefs in their original contexts. But hurry, the exhibition ends March 11.
What a difference a 150 years makes! Back in 1856, these six extraordinary bas-reliefs recovered from Nimrud underwent a camel caravan to Beirut and then ship to America, eventually making their way after five years into the collection at Dartmouth University. It was the foresight and generosity of collector Sir Henry Rawlison that preserved these masterpieces of Assyrian sculpture which otherwise might have been forever lost. The importance to world culture of collectors and benefactors like Rawlison can not be understated, and stand in sharp contrast to the media vilification of today's modern collectors.
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