“From Assyria to Iberia, by the Crossroads of the continents at the Dawn of the Classical Age”
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART IN NEW YORK

(September 22, 2014 – January 4, 2015)

The History Museum of Armenia participates in the international exhibition “From Assyria to Iberia, by the Crossroads of the Continents at the Dawn of the Classical Age”, which opened on September 22, 2014 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The latter continues a large exhibitions project, the two stages of which took place in 2003 and 2008 as two exhibitions: “The Art of the First Cities: the 3rd millennium BC from the Mediterranean Sea to India” and “Beyond Babylon: the Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the 2nd millennium BC”. The History Museum of Armenia participated in the exhibition of 2008 with an exceptional example of the Bronze Age culture.

The aim of the present exhibition is to show the sources and the development of the art traditions of the West, the roots of which originate from the interaction of cultures of the countries of the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium BC. The 260 examples presented in the exhibition are borrowed from fourteen famous museums in Western Europe, Caucasus, Middle East, Southern Africa and the United States.

The History Museum of Armenia has presented unique examples of the Urartian art for the exhibition, which according to the specialists of the Metropolitan Museum and the organizers of the present exhibition have a particular importance for their display as exceptional and valuable evidence, witnessing the constant role of the Armenian culture and its influence in the context of art and culture of the region: Assyria, Western Iran, Hittite States.

The participation of the History Museum of Armenia in this exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, one of the most authoritative museums in the world, is a remarkable opportunity for the evaluation and propaganda of the Armenian centuries-old culture and art.