Dallas Museum of Art opens The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum

The Dallas Museum of Art presents The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum an exhibition on view through October 6, 2013.

The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum, is a touring exhibition of more than 120 objects exploring the human form through exquisite artworks exclusively from the British Museum’s famed collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. Iconic marble and bronze sculptures, vessels, funerary objects, and jewelry are among the treasures that explore the human form, some dating back to the second millennium B.C. In addition to the objects from the British Museum, the exhibition will also present a model of Ancient Olympia as it would have appeared around 100 B.C., prior to the Roman additions and alterations.

The exhibition is organized along ten different thematic sections depicting the various ways the Greeks experimented with representing the human body, including adaptation of such work in later Roman art: “The Male Body Beautiful,” “Aphrodite and the Female Body,” “The Divine Body,” “Herakles: An Ancient Superman,” “Athletes,” “Birth, Marriage, and Death,” “Sex and Desire,” “Outsiders,” “Character and Realism,” and “The Human Face.” Iconic pieces from the British Museum’s collection are featured in the exhibition, including the Diskobolos (discus thrower) sculpture from the 2nd century A.D. The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum marks the first time this statue has been shown in the United States.

The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum is organized by the British Museum and curated by Ian Jenkins and Victoria Turner. The curator of the Dallas presentation is Anne Bromberg, The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art. www.dallasmuseumofart.org