Dahesh Museum of Art

The grant supported the exhibition The Legacy of Homer: Four Centuries of Art from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (October 11, 2005 - January 22, 2006). The exhibition was organized and presented in the fall of 2004 by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris to display the French Academy´s exceptional yet rarely seen collection of paintings and sculpture. The French Academy lent 133 objects divided between the Dahesh Museum and the Princeton University Art Museum, which held its own simultaneous exhibition. The Dahesh exhibition explored how the thrilling adventures of Homer´s memorable gods and heroes inspired a surprisingly large number of France´s classically trained artists from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. The exhibition was accompanied by a 384-page catalogue, published by Yale University Press, which further investigated how many of the artists reinterpreted earlier works of visual art and created their own motifs based on direct encounters with Homer´s poetry. The Dahesh Museum offered a variety of other related programs in conjunction with the exhibition, including lectures by distinguished scholars, curators and professors, Greek poetry and Homeric readings, workshops for Latin and Greek teachers, programming for families and children of all ages, and a weekend film festival.