Collections and Critiques

For its current exhibition of Etruscan can art, the Fogg Museum has received on loan some unique bronzes from the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. These rare bronzes help to round out the exhibition of art of a race that for centuries dominated Rome.

The collection is to be exhibited is the Balcony Room, on the second floor, until Sunday, December 31. There will be a gallery talk on Etruscan art in the exhibition room on Friday from 1 to 4 o'clock.

One of the outstanding pieces is a bronze statue of an Etruscan girl of the sixth century B.C., loaned by the Metropolitan Museum, and formerly in the Morgan collection. Comparable is this statuette is a later figure of an other Etruscan girl, in the Hoppin collection of the Fogg Museum.

A number of engraved mirrors are in the group of bronzes, the most notable of which is the large mirror loaned by the Metropolitan Museum. There is also on exhibition a large cista the Museum of Fine Arts.

Among the group of gold objects is a gold fibula or safety pin, decorated with a ram's head, whose Etruscan filigree work is of the greatest rarity. Of equal prominence is a series of gold dress ornaments used on a costume to the dead.

The exhibit of pottery shows the Etruscans to follow closely along the usual lines of the Greek potters. Granurns for the ashes of the dead, and numerous grotesque heads used on the eaves of the houses, round out the exhibition.