Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece

Explore the far-reaching trade networks that shaped the art and mythology of ancient Greece and the wider Mediterranean. During the eighth to early fifth century BCE, when maritime trade routes allowed the Greeks to travel great distances, Mediterranean artists found inspiration by leaving their homeland for places abroad. The period’s major artistic and cultural innovations—the rise of the city-state; the appearance of monumental Greek temples from Ionia to Sicily, southern Italy, north Africa, and southern France; festivals including the Olympic Games; the first use of the Greek alphabet, borrowed from the Phoenicians; and the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey—corresponded with a time of intense cultural interchange. This increased contact between the Greeks and other cultures had a profound effect on Greek art as well as the art of the people they encountered.

Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece presents more than 180 exceptional works produced during this time. With objects from different regions in various sizes and media—including stone, metal, terracotta, glass, and amber—it sheds light on the many ways the Greeks were influenced by the artistic styles, techniques, and traditions they encountered. Organized geographically—from the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia; Egypt and North Africa; Italy, Sicily and Sardinia; Western Mediterranean and Europe; and the Balkans and the Black Sea—the exhibition provides a broad and complex picture of the regions as a dynamic network in which Greece was only a part.

The ancient Greeks often defined their place in the world by incorporating stories, myths, and images of non-Greeks into their art. One key object, a terracotta drinking cup, depicts Herakles traveling far west across the sea in the enormous cauldron of the sun god Helios, an image that evokes the uncertain voyages undertaken by the Greeks to the limits of the known world, meeting unfamiliar terrain. By exploring the sheer number of different cultures with whom the Greeks interacted, as well as the works of art produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks, Across Wine-Dark Seas foregrounds the connectivity and diversity of the ancient world, encouraging a new appreciation for the relevance of ancient art.