Museums and the Ancient Middle East : Curatorial Practice and Audiences

Museums and the Ancient Middle East is the first book to focus on contemporary exhibit practice in museums that present the ancient Middle East. Bringing together the latest thinking from a diverse and international group of leading curators, the book presents the views of those working in one particular community of practice: the art, archaeology, and history of the ancient Middle East.

Drawing upon a remarkable group of case studies from many of the world’s leading museums, including the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, this volume describes the tangible actions curators have taken to present a previously unseen side of the Middle East region and its history. Highlighting overlaps and distinctions between the practices of national, art, and university museums around the globe, the contributors to the volume are also able to offer a unique insight into the types of challenges and opportunities facing the twenty-first century curator.

Museums and the Ancient Middle East should be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums and heritage, archaeology, the ancient Near East, Middle Eastern studies, and ancient history. The unique insights provided by curators active in the field ensure that the book should also be of great interest to museum practitioners around the globe.

Geoff Emberling is Associate Research Scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan. He has done curatorial work for most of his career, first as Assistant Curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, then as Museum Director and Chief Curator at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. He has also developed exhibits as consulting curator at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, and most recently at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He is also a field archaeologist who has directed projects in Syria and Sudan.

Lucas P. Petit is curator of the Near Eastern Department at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities. He curated several successful blockbuster exhibitions including "Petra. Wonder in the Desert" (2013-14) and "Nineveh. Heart of an Ancient Empire" (2017-18), and was responsible for renewing the permanent Middle Eastern galleries. He has had positions at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, and at Leiden University. He has been involved in various archaeological fieldwork projects throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Currently, he co-directs the excavations at Tell Damiyah in Jordan.