World History and Culture: Collection of late antique art presented at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

The exhibition The Good Life: Collecting Late Antique Art has been opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA).

The exposition showcases a rare collection of Egyptian art from III-XIII centuries and reevaluates it through the lens of late antique ideas about abundance and virtue. Writers and craftspeople translated these ideas into a concept celebrated as “the good life”. The exhibition explores themes connected to social status, wealth, and living well in Late Antiquity.

The first decades after the Museum’s founding was a time when profound interest in the earliest Christian art inspired scholars, collectors, and the public alike. Today, the Met continues to collect late antique art that reveals the burgeoning of literary and visual representations of a life well lived. The exhibition highlights The Met’s holdings of late antique textiles, decorative arts, jewelry and sculpture.

The works of art featured in the exhibition reflect the extraordinary wealth of Mediterranean Africa. In addition to marking status, these objects responded to such fundamental question as What does it mean to “live well”? During the period, ideas about “the good life” intersected with issues of religion, identity, and relationships with the past. As a result, these objects shed light on some of the aspirations, values, and lifestyle of upper classes in Late Antiquity.

The exhibition will run until May 7, 2023.