Roman Glass Exhibition Opens With Gallery Talk

The exhibition Shifting Sands: Roman Glass in the Bryn Mawr College Art and Archaeology Collections will open in the Kaiser Reading Room of Carpenter Library on Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 4:30 p.m. with a gallery talk by the exhibition's curator, Joelle Collins.

Collins is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr and is currently working on her dissertation, which examines art as a commodity in the Roman world. She also holds a B.A. in biology from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in the history of art from Bryn Mawr.

Following the talk in Carpenter Library, there will be a second gallery talk in the Rare Book Room of Canaday Library for the exhibition Breaking Ground, Breaking Tradition; Bryn Mawr and the First Generations of Women Archaeologists. The talk will be given by the exhibition's curator, Megan Risse, also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology.

Drawn from the College's extensive holdings of ancient glass, Shifting Sands: Roman Glass in the Bryn Mawr College Art and Archaeology Collections is organized around the theme of change. The invention of glass blowing at the end of the first century B.C.E. revolutionized the art of glass manufacture, turning glass from an elite luxury item into an everyday commodity for the masses. Shifting Sands traces the evolution of glass-forming techniques from the second millennium B.C.E. to the late Roman period and showcases the wide variety of uses to which glass was put in the Roman world.

The exhibition also explores change in another respect. Much ancient glass is altered in its physical appearance over time, often as a result of natural deterioration but sometimes as a result of modern restoration and conservation attempts. The process by which ancient glass acquires its iridescence is explained and the recent conservation of one of the Collections' own vessels documented.

Also accompanying the exhibition will be a lecture by Susan Handler Auth, Curator Emerita of the Classical Collection at the Newark Museum, entitled The Technology and Social Context of Ancient Glass. The lecture will be Thursday, Nov.15, at 4:30 p.m. in Carpenter Library 21. It is sponsored by the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Library.

The exhibition will run through January 2008.

<Back to Bryn Mawr Now 10/25/2007

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