Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. (The Met-Exhibit/Review)
Macroeconomically speaking, nations float or sink as one in a global age. Connectivity, we are learning, is the new history. But in fact this is nothing new. It has been true for some 4,000 years, and that is the subject of “Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.,” a big, prescient, concentration-taxing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It is the latest in the museum’s illustrious line of panoramic archaeological shows, and a direct sequel to the 2003 “Art of the First Cities,” which covered the third millennium B.C. Of American institutions, only the Met has the resources to pull off such projects, which depend as much on diplomatic clout as on cash, and which always carry the risk that long-made plans will capsize on the shifting tides of international politics.
Read entire article at NYT
It is the latest in the museum’s illustrious line of panoramic archaeological shows, and a direct sequel to the 2003 “Art of the First Cities,” which covered the third millennium B.C. Of American institutions, only the Met has the resources to pull off such projects, which depend as much on diplomatic clout as on cash, and which always carry the risk that long-made plans will capsize on the shifting tides of international politics.