Elizabeth Simpson (archaeologist)

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Elizabeth Simpson Elizabeth Simpson, Professor, Bard Graduate Center.jpg
Elizabeth Simpson

Elizabeth Simpson (born 1947) is an archaeologist, art historian, illustrator, and professor emerita at the Bard Graduate Center, [1] New York, NY, where she taught for 25 years. She is director of the project to study, conserve, and publish the large collection of rare wooden artifacts from Gordion, Turkey, which date to the eighth century BC. In this capacity, she is a consulting scholar in the Mediterranean Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. She received her PhD in classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985.

Contents

Research and projects

Simpson specializes in the arts and technology of the ancient world, including the history of furniture, jewelry and metalwork, and ceramics and glass. Her research centers on archaeological detective work and the interpretation of objects that have not been well understood. This includes the reinterpretation of the furniture and wooden artifacts from Gordion, [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] which are now in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, as well as the famous Pratt Ivories in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. [7] She solved a 100-year-old mystery regarding the identity of the Andokides Painter, the fine red-figure artist who painted a series of bilingual vases in Athens in the late 6th century BC. [8]

Simpson is a former curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Geographic Society, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Getty Grant Program, and the Archaeological Institute of America. In 1995, she organized a ground-breaking symposium at the Bard Graduate Center, "The Spoils of War—World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property". [9] This led to a reorganization of priorities at museums throughout the world, with an emphasis on provenance research and the ethical acquisition of works of art. In 1998, she received an award from the Ministry of Culture of the Turkish Republic for the protection of Turkish cultural heritage.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

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Pratt Ivories

The Pratt Ivories, also known as the AcemhöyükIvories, are a collection of furniture attachments produced in Anatolia in the early second millennium B.C. They were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 1932 and 1937 by Mr. and Mrs. George D. Pratt. The group represents one of the most important assemblages of furniture fittings from the ancient Near East. In particular, a preserved set of four sphinxes, three lion legs, a falcon, and two recumbent gazelles, comprise the earliest and most complete evidence for a luxury chair or throne from the ancient world. Many of the other pieces in the group likely belonged to a number of small decorative objects.

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References

  1. "Elizabeth Simpson, Bard Graduate Center".
  2. Simpson, Elizabeth (2010). The Gordion Wooden Objects, Volume I: The Furniture from Tumulus MM. Leiden: Brill.
  3. Simpson, Elizabeth (2012). "Royal Phrygian Furniture and Fine Wooden Artifacts from Gordion". The Archaeology of Phrygian Gordion, Royal City of Midas. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology: 149–164.
  4. Simpson, Elizabeth (2001). "Celebrating Midas: Contents of a Great Phrygian King's Tomb Reveal a Lavish Funerary Banquet". Archaeology. 54.4: 26–33.
  5. Simpson, Elizabeth; Spirydowicz, Krysia (1999). Gordion Wooden Furniture: The Study, Conservation and Reconstruction of the Furniture and Wooden Objects from Gordion, 1981-1998 (in English and Turkish). Ankara: Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
  6. Simpson, Elizabeth (1988). "The Phrygian Artistic Intellect". Source. 7.3/4: 24–42.
  7. Simpson, Elizabeth (2013). Koehl, R. B. (ed.). "An Early Anatolian Ivory Chair: The Pratt Ivories in the Metropolitan Museum of Art". Amilla: The Quest for Excellence. Papers Presented to Guenter Kopcke in Celebration of His 75th Birthday. Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press: 221–261.
  8. Simpson, Elizabeth (2002). Clark, A.; Gaunt, J. (eds.). "The Andokides Painter and Greek Carpentry". Essays in Honor of Dietrich von Bothmer: 2002.
  9. Simpson, Simpson, ed. (1997). The Spoils of War-- World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.