Online Lecture
In 1872, just two years after it was founded, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, received as its first major gift of art some 4500 Egyptian antiquities collected in Egypt in the 1820s and 1830s by Robert Hay, which had been purchased in London from Hay’s heirs by Samuel Alds Way, a wealthy Boston merchant. At that time, this was the largest collection of Egyptian art in America. The installation of these antiquities — mostly objects of daily life and funerary art, including seven mummies in their decorated coffins — was so successful with the public that the Trustees of the Museum were induced to pursue collecting Egyptian art directly through excavations in Egypt, so that the collection now numbers close to 70,000 objects. As a result, the Hay Collection--which had provided its initial stimulus— was somewhat overshadowed. Ongoing efforts by the Museum to make its collections more accessible, combined with a thorough rehousing and inventorying project in Egyptian storage, puts us in a better position now than ever before to consider the Hay-Way collection in its entirety. An overview of this collection reveals a number of surprises as well as a precious insight into the earliest days of Egyptology and the reception of Egyptian art in America.
Dr Lawrence M. Berman is Norma Jean Calderwood Senior Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is the author of The Priest, the Prince, and the Pasha: The Life and Afterlife of an Ancient Egyptian Sculpture. MFA Publications, 2015; and Unearthing Ancient Nubia: Photographs from the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. MFA Publications, 2018. His latest book, on ancient Egyptian portraits, will be published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in Fall 2022.
Entry: £5 members, £7 non-members