Join MA-NMWA on Thursday, December 3 at 5:00pm for a curator led tour at the MFA, Boston, with Rita Freed, Hutchins Fellow at Harvard University, professor of Egyptian and Nubian art at Wellesley College, and Emeritus MFA Egyptian Art curator, of an exhibition that could be called “Maverick Queen.”
“The exhibition is a revelation” - The Boston Globe
Current MA-NMWA Members will have a week for early registration for this very special tour, beginning on November…, after which registration will be open to everyone. Join us after the tour for a self-treat cocktail, appetizer or an early dinner in the MFA’s Shapiro Family Courtyard.
“Maverick Kings,” the brainchild of the MFA’s longtime Egyptian curator, Lawrence Berman, looks past the obvious history, going deeper to explore a culturally rich moment when art in the Egyptian Kingdom, fertile with relative peace, truly thrived.
This flourishing began not with a king at all, but with a queen: Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt from 1473 to 1458 BCE. “King” in this case is semantic, as Berman points out in an essay in the MFA’s recent book “Faces of Ancient Egypt,” that there was no word in Ancient Egyptian for “queen.” But rule Hatshepsut did, and with a priority on provocative and innovative styles that are now emblems of ancient Egyptian art more broadly.
One of the very first Egyptian objects to arrive in North America, in 1835, was a fragment from one of Hatshepsut's fallen granite obelisks at Karnak, recovered by the Bostonian John Lowell Jr. on a trip up the Nile that year.
Hatshepsut’s rule was marked by a keen interest in artistic and cultural innovation. She was a builder, and the first great one of her time. The vast temple at Karnak, Egypt’s grandest and most expansive, grew massively during her reign. The great complexes of Luxor were begun by her too, starting the transformation of Thebes, the capital, into a ritual landscape.
There will be a self-treat dinner at the MFA following the tour, for those members who are interested.
