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Newsletter - Spring 1999
Future Exhibitions

The Moon and the Stars: Afterlife of an Empress
4 September - 19 December 1999

Faustina the Elder was the wife of one Roman emperor-Antoninus Pius-and aunt and mother-in-law of another-Marcus Aurelius. Although much of her relatively brief life remains cloaked in mystery, her reputation lived on well beyond her own lifetime, flourished in the Renaissance, and continues even in our own century. It is this notion of her afterlife and the concept of aeternitas that will be investigated in a focus exhibition at the art museum in September 1999.

Following the acquisition of a major marble portrait of Faustina by the museum in the spring of 1997, several courses were created by art history professor Bettina Bergmann to take advantage of this new sculpture. Although Faustina the Elder (so named to distinguish her from her daughter Faustina the Younger) had a enduring reputation as a woman of intelligence and virtue, she has yet to be the subject of extensive study. The students in Bergmann's 1997 seminar, "Exhibiting Ancient Women," capitalized on this opportunity, undertaking original research about the sculpture itself and how an exhibition about Faustina might be formulated. They examined a series of recent exhibitions focusing exclusively on women in antiquity, including the I, Claudia show organized by Mount Holyoke alumna Susan Matheson at the Yale University Art Gallery. The students looked at the ways in which women are depicted in antiquity, as well as the ways in which we look back at those periods and cultures. In addition, they considered what decisions are made in the preparation of such museum shows.

Spurred on by the enthusiasm of the students, co-curators Bettina Bergmann and Wendy Watson moved ahead with plans for the exhibition, supported by a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. The project-a true collaboration between faculty, students, and museum staff-will demonstrate how a single object like the portrait of Faustina can be an essential starting point for teaching across the curriculum, not only in art history and studio art, but in classics, history, religion, women's studies, and other disciplines. As Bergmann noted, "a sculpture of this kind helps complete the picture of the Roman material environment. Seen alongside the museum's outstanding wall paintings from Pompeii and its ancient coins-some with Faustina's likeness-museum visitors can learn what was truly important to the Romans, what their priorities were."

The Moon and the Stars: Afterlife of an Empress will explore the ways in which Faustina and other women in public life were depicted in ancient times, how their roles and status were portrayed, and how they were commemorated after their deaths. The exhibition will demonstrate how Faustina and other family members were represented in official portraits ranging from marble sculptures to coins that proliferated throughout the empire. These likenesses were so widespread that most ordinary Romans would have been as familiar with Faustina's face as Americans are with that of Hillary Clinton.

Included in the exhibition will be images relating to Faustina's death and her metamorphosis into a goddess, such as prints, drawings, coins, early photographs, and watercolors that represent the empress's funeral cart and pyre, and her transcendence into the heavens on the wings of an eagle. The commemorative Temple to the Goddess Faustina in the Roman Forum and the sculptural base of the Column of Antoninus Pius survive physically today, and will be shown in prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and 19th-century photographs.

Another section of the show will examine how posthumous images of Faustina have functioned in later eras. For example, the reuse of gold coins with the empress's image in late antique rings and necklaces, as well as their reproduction in Renaissance and Baroque books and medals, attest to the preservation of her memory as one of the "good empresses." The history of the conservation and display of the empress's busts in Italian public museums and English private estates, seen in renderings of these early collections, reveals changing aesthetic values and engagement with the classical past.

The final section will examine images of women that resonate with the tradition of Faustina portraits, using a selection of neoclassical sculptures ranging from a portrait of the late-3rd century Roman empress Otacilia to 19th- and 20th-century marble heads by artists such as Hiram Powers, Daniel Chester French, and Elie Nadelman.