Author Description

Nearly every year since 1975, the Metropolitan Museum has published a selection of its notable acquisitions. This publication has proved to be an efficient vehicle for bringing to the public's attention the most important works of art added to the collections. However, the increasing cost of art on the one hand, together with limited funds for such purchases on the other, have inescapably diminished the number of truly noteworthy acquisitions. Concomitantly, the publication has become a forum for the discussion of artworks that—while filling important gaps in various departmental collections—are not in the first tier, and would likely have to wait patiently before otherwise appearing in print. Thus, the nature of the publications has unmistakably evolved. Indeed, as it now, in effect, has a twofold purpose, we have retitled it Recent Acquisitions: A Selection. That said, we are nonetheless extraordinarily excited by two great collections that have enriched the Museum during the last year: archaic and early Chinese art from the Ernest Erickson Foundation, and twenty-four Egyptian reliefs from the collection of Norbert Schimmel. Mr. Schimmel has long been one of the Museum's foremost benefactors, giving generously to the Ancient Near East and Egyptian departments on many occasions. Since 1979 his entire collection of Amarna relief blocks has been on loan to the Museum, in a gallery specially given over to its display. These limestone reliefs served as wall facings for the numerous public structures erected at Tell el Amarna in Middle Egypt by King Akhenaton (reign about 1379–1362 B.C.). To speed his ambitious building program—and in one of history's first instances of mass production—the blocks were intentionally cut to a uniform portable size. They are carved in a peculiar admixture of sunk relief and bas-relief characteristic of the period, and the scenes that they bear provide crucial information about the king's religious revolution, with its distinctive f