The San Diego Museum of Art is 80 years old this year, and with age comes lots of responsibility and, if you’re lucky, greater acclaim. Household names like Goya, Homer and Warhol are represented in the venue’s 14-exhibit agenda for 2006; theoretically, that kind of firepower can’t help fuel its public place for the next 80 years and beyond.
The same theory says that antiquity picks up where art leaves off “” while art boasts a litany of subjects, antiquity traces their lives. “In Stabiano: Exploring the Ancient Seaside Villas of the Roman Elite” charts exactly what its title suggests “” and its significance to the museum rivals antiquity itself.
“This is the first four-year long-term loan of objects from Italy to the United States,” said Steven Kern, the museum’s curator of European art. “The structure of this loan may introduce a new era in the relationship between the archaeologists and museums. It allows objects to be rotated from Italy to major U.S. museums and back again.”
San Diego is the fourth of nine venues to mount the exhibit. The tour ends in Jacksonville, Fla. in February of 2008.
The villas weren’t houses so much as opulent meeting halls, populated by as many as 600 members of the senatorial order at the fated city of Pompeii and its outskirts off Southwestern Italy’s Bay of Naples. Suburban Stabiae, which had been leveled during Italy’s Social Wars of 89 B.C., would revive as a resort city, its homes peppered with great art and artifacts. Resident entertainers and cooks enjoyed access to sprawling libraries, ponds and picture galleries. “That which was destroyed,” philosopher and naturalist Pliny the Elder understated, “is now a place of villas.”
It would take her a while to implement it, but Nature had a different vision for the area. On August 24, A.D. 79, that vision took shape with the fabled devastation of nearby Mount Vesuvius. Its eruption generated a major flood, lethal gasses and superheated ash; 48 hours later, Pompeii and the surrounding area, including Stabiae, was buried along with its legacy. Pliny himself was killed in the blast, apparently asphyxiated as he lay on the ground.
Stabiae was submerged for nearly 17 centuries, remarkably preserved amid the ash and debris. The first excavations began in 1749 and yielded frescoes devoted to the Romans’ fascination with Dionysian ancient Greece. Two hundred years would pass before the next wave of discoveries, which resulted in the unearthing of one entire villa. Only a small part of the acreage has been excavated to date; the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation will spearhead the remaining work and transform the site into a 150-acre archaeological park. Meanwhile, the museum is temporary home to the tour’s 72 pieces, taken from the villas San Marco, Arianna, del Pastore, Carmiano and Petraro. Thirty-five of those include massive frescoes and stuccos; an entire three-walled dining room anchors a display of eating utensils and drinking vessels. “Landscape with Maritime Villa,” “The Cupid Vendor”: Such incontinent names dot the artifacts, which are strikingly muted in their color schemes. The quiet reds, blues and browns may illustrate the contentment with which the privileged class approached its lot in life.
For co-curator Thomas Howe, no such fidelity exists. At a media preview on Feb. 17, he alluded to the politics and red tape behind “Stabiano” “” surmounting such obstacles, he added, was its own reward.
¦[T]he relationship between archaeologists and museums and national governments is as strained as you could possibly imagine,” he said. “It’s a true gift to the people of San Diego and a true sign of cooperation that we bring ‘Stabiano’ to this museum at this time”¦ [H]ow privileged we are to work on a show that demonstrates what joint collaboration can produce.”
“In Stabiano: Exploring the Ancient Seaside Villas of the Roman Elite” runs through May 14 at the museum’s Balboa Park site, 1450 El Prado. The museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., except Thursdays, when it closes at 9:00. Call 619-232-7931 or at www.sdmart.org.