Head of a Man. Italy, Rome, found at Baia, near Naples. 1st Century B.C. – 1st century A.D. Marble, Height 9¼ in. Gift of the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the Piero Tozzi Gallery, 1963. (A1963.83) Collection of the Staten Island Museum. Photo courtesy of the Staten Island Museum.
A collection of archeological treasures from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the ancient Americas is to be showcased in a new exhibit at the Staten Island Museum.
Sheltered for more than a century at the Staten Island Museum in St. George, just off the Staten Island Ferry, the historical objects have been reviewed in recent months in preparation for a major new exhibit by museum employees working with faculty and student-interns from The City University of New York’s College of Staten Island (CSI), located in the Willowbrook section of the borough.
“The collaboration between CSI and the Museum began in 1999 with a co-initiative launched by CSI faculty and the organization then known as the Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences,” said CSI History Department Chairperson Dr. Eric Ivison. “Since then, the teamwork between us has forged a successful, ongoing student-internship program, as well as the Staten Island Museum’s Archaeology Study Collection project at the College, which cataloged the details of several hundred artifacts formerly on loan to the CSI Library from the Museum.”
Over the past 13 years, the Archaeology Study Collection of ancient antiquities has been used by CSI faculty for innovative, “hands-on” instruction and as research projects for hundreds of students. The project is also supported by a Website developed by CSI professors Eric Ivison and Linda Roccos entitled, Staten Island Museum at CSI: Archaeology Study Collection for Ancient and Medieval Civilizations.
The bulk of these antiquities once formed part of a private collection of some 2,000 items formed by Scottish natives Francis MacDonald (1825-1878) and his wife, Elizabeth (Eliza) Wallace MacDonald (1825-1911), Dr. Ivison said. Francis MacDonald, a founding member of the New York Produce Exchange and New York agent for the Anchor Shipping Line, enjoyed great financial success, permitting his family to move to the suburb of Clifton on the northeastern shore of rural Staten Island, an area then much favored by the wealthy middle class. According to Dr. Ivison, who has researched the history of the MacDonald family, the MacDonald Collection provides interesting insights into the tastes and aspirations of an upper-middle-class family in mid-19th-century New York.
Francis and Eliza’s son, David Wallace MacDonald, gave the collection to the Staten Island Museum in memory of his mother, following her death on Aug. 21, 1911. In terms of size and importance, the former MacDonald Collection constitutes one of the most significant bequests to what was later to become the Staten Island Museum.
TREASURE BOX
Within the MacDonald Collection, Dr. Ivison added, “The most significant group of objects were the over 400 ancient antiquities from Egypt, the Levant, Greece, and Italy.”
A selection of these antiquities will form part of the new “Treasure Box” galleries, which will display highlights of the Staten Island Museum’s permanent collections. These galleries will be located in the Museum’s new, larger facility, due to open in fall 2014 in a landmarked 134-year-old Greek Revival building at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden.
“Until recently, the Museum didn’t have the means or staff to properly record the details of the artifacts in a timely fashion with 21st-century precision,” said Robert Bunkin, Art Curator of the Staten Island Museum. “In addition, we wanted to display these treasures within an optimum climate-controlled and viewer-friendly environment. Our goals are seeing fruition due to the Museum’s collaborative educational efforts with CSI, and the anticipated opening of the Museum’s new home at Snug Harbor.”
The Museum’s current expansion project at Snug Harbor, in the Staten Island community of Livingston, follows the 2009 renovation of the adjacent Building H into a new home for its History Archives, and the 2008 launch of both the Staten Island History Center and Art Conservation Studio.
The new building, said Museum Exhibitions and Program Director Diane Matyas, “will embrace more than 10,000 square feet of public space. This will provide us with the opportunity to showcase a greater number of natural science objects, and fabulous artworks that – like the ones highlighted by our most recent inventory initiative – have been out of the public eye for many decades.”
COLLEGE INTERNS BENEFIT
One of the artworks to be featured in the new “Treasure Box” galleries will be the sculptured Roman marble portrait “Head of Man.” This artwork, said to be from Baiae near Naples, Italy, and dated to between the First Century BCE and the First Century CE, was presented to the Museum in 1963 by the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the Piero Tozzi Gallery. Frank Cretella, who earned a BA in History at CSI and who has worked as an intern at the Museum, researched the portrait in Dr. Ivison’s graduate class. “It was a remarkable experience,” said Mr. Cretella. “It’s one thing to look at objects on the page of a book; it’s totally different to hold the actual artifact in your hands, examine it, measure it, and study it.”
Jennifer Williams, another graduate student of Dr. Ivison’s at CSI and an intern at the Museum, is preparing a History Master’s thesis on the collection of Pre-Columbian antiquities, some of which will also be featured in the “Treasure Box” galleries. Among the many important pre-Columbian artifacts rediscovered by Williams during her research at the museum is a spondylus pendant with a shell-bead necklace. “This was a particularly exciting find for me because spondylus (a spiny, brightly colored shell) was a sacred material to many Andean cultures including the Inca,” she said.