Frenzied dancing to the goddess Isis; the Great Mother Goddess floating in a boat; revelers tossing wine dregs at the wall. The American Academy in Rome’s Art Gallery opened its doors on Friday to a show—and a crowd—of a somewhat different kind. The show featured objects from the AAR’s Norton–Van Buren Archaeology Study Collection—a collection of over six thousand objects including everything from Etruscan cinerary urns to Christian lamps, much of which has never been exhibited to the public. But the real stars were the curators—undergraduates from the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (ICCS), who organized every aspect of the show as part of their semester-long program on ancient languages and culture.
The exhibition explored the myriad of different religions and religious practices one might encounter on the streets of ancient Rome. From worship in the great public temples—represented by a decorative terracotta plaque from such a temple—to prayers and incense burned before the family lars—or household god—the exhibition reminds us that religious diversity is not just a modern phenomenon. One of the highlights of the show was a small altar dedicated to the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis by an imperial official: Egyptian deities had a huge vogue in ancient Rome, where their exotic origins and strange rituals lent them an air of mystery and power. This was a world of religious quid pro quo: if you wanted something from the gods, believing in them wasn’t enough. You had to do things. The small terracotta votive pig—my favorite object in the show—is the tip of a vast structure of reciprocity, of people giving to the gods in hopes of receiving some of their beneficence in return. In this, as in so many other moments in this show, the past really seems a foreign country. Even Christianity, included in this show in one small oil lamp still bearing the stains of charcoal from its wick, was simply one of a number of religious options vying with one another in a city full of gods.
The students from ICCS who curated Religious Experience in Ancient Rome did the project as part of their rigorous “City of Rome” course. The students were presented with seventy objects—many of which were as humble as pottery shards or bone pins—and charged with making an exhibit from them—any exhibit. They had to compose an object list of 25, craft an exhibition narrative, research and write the catalogue entries, and design the exhibit. American Academy intern coordinator Megan Goldman-Petri of Princeton University supervised their work and helped bring the project to fruition.
While there were no eunuch priests or Isaic priestesses at the opening, there was an enthusiastic crowd of undergraduates, archaeologists and a good turnout of AAR community members as well. The show is one of a series of collaborations between AAR and undergraduate programs in the city. Students from ICCS, IES Abroad, the American University in Rome and the Accademia Belle Arti di Frosinone have been working in the Archaeology Study collection, helping to catalogue and rehouse objects, learning about curatorial and conservation practices, and doing original research. AAR’s Archaeology Study collection represents one of the finest hands-on teaching opportunities in the city, and an embodiment of the Academy’s mission to foster collaborative research.