An exhibition of artifacts from Pompeii and nearby towns immobilized by the ancient eruption of Mount Vesuvius will make its U.S. debut at the Dallas Museum of Art this December. The Texas museum announced on Wednesday, August 25, that Journey Through Pompeii: Masterpieces from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples will present more than 160 preserved objects, including stucco reliefs, marble sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, and domestic wares.
“The works in the exhibition have been a source of fascination and inspiration for centuries,” the Dallas Museum of Art’s assistant curator, Anabelle Gambert-Jouan, told Hyperallergic. “We’re delighted to bring highlights from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples’ outstanding collection to Texas audiences, who may not otherwise have the chance to see these treasures so close to home.”
With provenances in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabia, three towns in the Bay of Naples covered in ash during Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 CE, the objects offer a glimpse into daily life that was destroyed at the same moment it was preserved. Organized across galleries focused on politics, sports, domesticity, and dining traditions, the exhibition shows how each work was used in its original setting. Among the highlights is a black-and-white mosaic from a dining room depicting a skeleton carrying two wine jugs, a memento mori that reflects Roman belief and a banquet culture that encouraged revelers to enjoy themselves before death.
Other works in the show include “Fourth Style” frescoes illustrating Roman myths, among them Heracles’s time serving Queen Omphale of Lydia and a solitary Cupid suspended in a field of yellow pigment. Journey Through Pompeii also turns to everyday habits of the region’s residents, with objects such as a silver kantharos, or goblet, from the House of Menander in Pompeii; a painting of entwined snakes from a domestic shrine; and a stucco relief of a nude athlete from the nymphaeum of Villa San Marco in Stabia, which evokes the swimming that took place below it.
Although the exhibition emphasizes the traces of life preserved in these objects, it concludes by confronting the disaster that made their survival possible. The final gallery will include a replica of a plaster cast of one of the thousands of people who died in the eruption’s fallout. After its Dallas run, on view from December 13 through May 2, 2027, the exhibition will travel to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond and the Frist Art Museum in Nashville.
“We are offering our community an opportunity to see that the undercurrents of life back then weren’t so different from our own: people felt the same hunger for beauty, connection and meaning that defines us today,” Brian Ferriso, the Dallas Museum of Art’s director, said in a statement.
