OVERVIEW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME’S
ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY COLLECTION

The Archaeological Study Collection consists of several thousand artifacts, including coins, sculpture, numerous classes of pottery, bronze objects, implements for spinning thread and weaving, inscriptions and, even, tools from the Neolithic period. The Collection was assembled through purchases and donations prior to WWII and prior to the international antiquities laws enforced today. Prof. Katherine Geffcken is the resident expert in the history of the Collection and the forthcoming volume edited by Larissa Bonfante and Ili Nagy (University of Michigan Press) contains a very interesting historical introduction by Kathy. An excerpt from her Introduction is as follows:

“When the American School of Classical Studies merged officially with the American Academy on January 1, 1913, an important part of the collection had already been gathered. In its seventeen years of independent existence (1895-1912), the Classical School steadily received, as donations and long-term loans, artifacts that the faculty could use in teaching and School members could study daily. During this first major period, the dominant collector and donor was Richard Norton, whose association with the School extended over ten years (1897-1907), first as Professor of Archaeology, then as Director.

The second major figure in the collection’s history was Albert William Van Buren. While Norton was the real founder of the Collection, Van Buren lovingly cared for it from 1926 until his retirement after World War II. But Van Buren’s involvement in the Collection goes back to his fellowship days under Norton, when he first donated some objects and catalogued the School’s epigraphic collection. In his long time as Curator, he steadily inventoried, arranged the artifacts in museum rooms, and directed Fellows in publishing parts of the Collection.

(Many) other men and women played roles in assembling the Academy’s Collection (among whom Edith Van Deman, Elizabeth Van Buren, Thomas Ashby, and Allison Vincent Armour, Charles Curtis and George Olcott). On more than one occasion, these donors and scholars practiced methods of acquisition or excavation unacceptable to today’s archaeologists. But while not applauding their methods, we note that these were common practices.”

The Study Collection was moved on a number of occasions. At first, the Collection was housed inside the area that the American Academy currently uses to host exhibitions. Around 1939, the Collection was moved upstairs into the area that would later become known as the “Cosa Room”. In the late 1940’s with the initiation of the Cosa excavations, Prof. Frank Brown kept some of the pieces upstairs, but had much of the Collection brought back to the Ground Floor to make space for work on the Cosa Project. In 1968, the archaeology division of the American Academy was shifted into the Villa Chiaraviglio and the Collection was placed into a series of white cabinets in the hallway of the basement. From this point on, the collection was regarded less and less. In the mid 1980’s Prof. Larissa Bonfante and Prof. Helen Nagy were asked by Mellon Professor Darby Scott to coordinate the publication of the entire Collection. They, in turn, asked a number of illustrious scholars to prepare catalogues on groups of material pertaining to their areas of expertise.

The results of these efforts are the aforementioned volume as well as an on-line database containing the individual catalogue entries. Several years ago, an anonymous donor provided a very generous monetary gift to the American Academy in order to create a new and dignified space for the Stiudy Collection, which was inaugurated on October 2, 2008.

Text by Eric C. De Sena