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Home > Blogs > Things to do in Butler County > Archives > 2009 > June > 03 > Entry
Museum of Ancient Art at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park now open
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park offers a new permanent feature this summer with the opening of its Museum of Ancient Sculpture.
While park founder Harry T. Wilks has been rounding up his collection of large contemporary work for the 265-acre outdoor sculpture park, he’s also been quietly accumulating ancient sculpture, which until now he kept in the Pyramid House, his private residence on park grounds.
As he did with Pyramid House, Wilks devised much of the design of the 10,000 square foot museum himself, based on buildings he’s seen on his European travels, he said.
“When I went to Rome, I saw these estates with inner gardens and cloistered walkways,” he said. “This is my rendition of ancient Rome and Pompeii. I call the design ‘Roman-inspired eclectic.’ If you have a building for ancient sculpture, why not make it look ancient?”
“There are no reproductions,” Wilks said. “Every one of these works of art is a true museum piece that I’ve purchased from Sotheby’s and Christie’s,” two New York auction houses that guarantee both the authenticity and the provenance of the items to ensure that they are not stolen.
Wilks said that he has focused his collection in four areas: Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Etruscan sculpture.
Steven Tuck, Distinguished Scholar in Miami University’s Department of Classics, has been working with Wilks to catalog and research the collection and has come up with some interesting information about several of the pieces.
“Even though everything was purchased from Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the information they provide is usually very limited,” Tuck said.
For instance, one piece was purchased with a label saying “Head of a god.” But upon a close examination, Tuck found a series of holes drilled in the head, indicating that there is a piece missing, most likely a halo, indicating that it was Helios, the God of the Sun, created sometime in the second century.
Tuck said that he looks for other visual clues like hairstyles and clothing to help date pieces, and some of the pieces have writing on them that helps.
He has been able to trace a funerary urn, for instance, to a particular family cemetery outside of Athens, and can pinpoint the date to between 300 and 380 B.C. because of its similarity to pieces in other museums.
The centerpiece of the Egyptian portion of the collection, for instance, is an Egyptian coffin that is covered with hieroglyphic writing.
“I found that it was the grandson of a Pharaoh,” Tuck said. “The tomb was in Luxor on the west bank of the Nile near the Valley of Kings.”
Tuck said that many of the pieces in the Pyramid Hill collection are as good as or better than pieces in other museums.
“There’s an Etruscan urn here from 150 B.C.,” he said by way of example. “There’s another one almost identical to it in the Louvre, but this one is in better condition.
“The fact that he has focused his collection on these four areas gives you a good range of material in each one,” he said.
Tuck said that his plan is to create a catalog that will have entries on each piece detailing where it came from and what it means.
“You get a better sense of what this art meant to the people that made it and the people that saw it,” he said, “about their belief systems and cultural values, what they wanted to be remembered for, about their hopes.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Galleries/Exhibitions, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park
Comments
By CAROL
June 4, 2009 7:32 AM | Link to this
This sounds wonderful but where is it located?
By Sara
June 4, 2009 8:02 AM | Link to this
This exhibit is located inside the park on Hamilton-Cleves Road.