About the collection

Access  |  Conservation  |  Global relationships

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Establishing global relationships

In February 2008, the Museum facilitated a landmark international event as representatives from the Italian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian museum officials came together with archaeologists and scholars on Morgantina for The Goddesses Return: A Symposium on the Repatriation to Italy of Acrolithic Sculptures from Morgantina, in celebration of the return of two acroliths, images of the goddesses Demeter and Kore, to their original site in Sicily.

The repatriation has cultivated an ongoing collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture, providing an opportunity to extend the conversation with a series of long-term loans from Italian museums, an exciting prospect that will engage Museum visitors in the coming years. This agreement represents what can be achieved when intellectual resources are shared between countries.

Francesca Fiorani, Associate Professor in the McIntire Department of Art, has suggested that the first project might involve the Bartolo di Fredi predella panel, Seven Saints in Adoration, a 14th-century Siennese work. This small fragment was once part of a large altarpiece with a central painting of the Adoration of the Magi. That painting now resides in the National Gallery in Sienna and could possibly be borrowed for the purpose of researching the relationship between the two paintings.