LACMA

Not currently on view

The collection consists of over two thousand objects spanning more than four thousand years and an area extending from the eastern Mediterranean to Pakistan, with a particular focus on Iran. Holdings—including cylinder seals, pottery, bronze horse-trappings, silver vessels, and a group of large Assyrian stone reliefs—bear witness to some of the major cultural achievements and historical events associated with the ancient Near East.

Iran, Luristan

A Short but Elaborate Journey

April 22, 2010

Our European galleries continue to reopen in phases—the Dutch collection opened a few months ago, and the Northern Italian and Spanish galleries have just gone on view, with the rest of the collection to open in the summer. It’s been a complicated process as we overhaul the flow of the space on the Ahmanson Building’s third floor. The latest big change? We needed to move our five massive Assyrian reliefs from one gallery to their new home just around the corner. The panels, which date back to the ninth century B.C., weigh one or two tons each. This is the third reinstallation of the reliefs since their acquisition in the 1960s, and probably their fifth journey since their discovery in the nineteenth century. You can imagine how difficult and delicate a process it might be to move them even a few yards. Senior Conservation Photographer Yosi Pozeilov was there to document the big move. . .