The most comprehensive exhibition ever presented on the ancient city of Petra opens at the Cincinnati Art Museum on September 14, 2004. Petra: Lost City of Stone, which is described as the first-ever major cultural collaboration between the United States and Jordan, was co-organized with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (where it was on display from October 2003 to July 2004), under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan. The organizers are hopeful that “just as Petra was a center of global commerce in ancient times,” in the words of Cincinnati Art Museum director Timothy Rub, “we are bridging divides in our global society through this exhibition.”
Prior to the show’s opening, the Cincinnati Art Museum invited journalists to view the site of Petra in person on a trip hosted by the Jordan Tourism Board. There they were able to see the art and artifacts in their original context, the city that was almost entirely carved from the walls of a desert canyon on the route between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea. During its heyday in the last two centuries B.C., Petra was the capital of the Nabateans, an originally nomadic people from Western Arabia that built the city into a prosperous center of trade. The art and history of this culture is the subject of the exhibition’s companion book, Petra Rediscovered: Lost City of the Nabatean Kingdom (Abrams, 2003), which features essays by 28 international experts.
The Petra artifacts will return to Jordan after January, 2005. A permanent exhibit, however, of interest to BAR readers has recently been created in the University of Hartford’s new George J. Sherman and Lottie K. Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization. The museum has displays on many different aspects and periods of Jewish culture, including a permanent exhibition on archaeology in Israel. The venue will host a variety of traveling exhibitions, as well, beginning with “Cities of David: From Bethsaida to Jerusalem,” a display of about 200 artifacts from Israel that will remain at the museum until December 20, 2004. The exhibition’s highlights include an incense shovel that may have been used in the Second Temple, and the key to a fisherman’s house in Bethsaida, popularly known as the key to St. Peter’s house. The museum’s opening in March was kicked off with presentations by University of Hartford Professor Richard Freund and Rami Arav of the University of Omaha, co-directors of the Bethsaida Excavation Project.
The most comprehensive exhibition ever presented on the ancient city of Petra opens at the Cincinnati Art Museum on September 14, 2004. Petra: Lost City of Stone, which is described as the first-ever major cultural collaboration between the United States and Jordan, was co-organized with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (where it was on display from October 2003 to July 2004), under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan. The organizers are hopeful that “just as Petra was a center of global commerce in ancient times,” in the words of Cincinnati […]
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