From Baltimore to Havana: Tracking Down the Distribution of Antioch Mosaic
As I dive deeper into the information surrounding the excavation and distribution of the mosaics, I am struck by the many moving parts and a somewhat dizzying array of people, institutions, and mosaics involved. To begin my research, I first consulted two finding aids prepared by the BMA that are available online: 1. The Antioch Excavation Director’s Reports and 2. the Robert Garrett Diaries and Calling Card. The information contained in the latter two documents not only provides a concise and comprehensive background of the excavations and the key players involved, but also gave me insight into the specific archival materials housed in the BMA’s library which I have very recently begun to consult in person.
A preliminary examination of the excavation based on the latter two documents indicates that it had its origins in two previous expeditions to Syria, namely those of Count Charles Jean Melchior de Vogue and Dr. Howard Crosby Butler. Vogue published his work from 1865-1877 titled “La Syrie Centrale,” and Butler, who embarked on Princeton’s two-year Abyssinian Expedition to Syria, along with Robert Garrett, a Princeton alumnus and BMA trustee, who helped secure the involvement of the BMA in the excavations.
The initial idea for the Antioch excavations, however, began with Charles Rufus Morey, the chair of Princeton’s Department of Art and Archaeology, with involvement beginning as early as 1927 when the French Antiquities Service asked if Princeton would be interested in excavating at Antioch. Four campaigns were carried out in Antioch and the suburb Daphne in 1933-36, and the final excavations were carried out in 1939, but were brought to a halt by the outbreak of World War II.
My route to charting a possible path of distribution has first been to identify a set of mosaics to work with, a set that preferably has mosaics distributed to different institutions, particularly institutions not involved in the initial excavations. Frances F. Jones’ 1981 article recommended by one of our colleagues at the BMA, has also been a useful resource at tracking the various locations around the United States in which these mosaics are located. However, given the article’s 1981 publication date, some shifts in acquisition, deaccessioning, etc. have surely occurred. To begin to manage the many moving parts, I first looked at all the mosaics in the BMA and carefully read the labels to see what house or structure they were from. After, I researched all 14 houses/structures in which the mosaics housed in the BMA were from to see the museums and institutions in which other mosaics related to the same site were distributed. I have now landed on two potential structures in which to delve further into: the Hall of Philia (DK-34) and the House of the Buffet Supper.
All items in the Hall of Philia are in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Unlike all the other houses I examined which had mosaics sent to multiple collections, the Hall of Philia was the only one where all the items were confined to the BMA (though this could perhaps be the case that other museums have all the mosaics belonging to a particular room/site, limiting to one museum will give me a manageable corpus to work with). This makes sense considering that there are only five mosaics and not an unwieldy amount, as is the case in some other sites. However, as I was looking through the mosaics, another item caught my attention: a marble grill found on the mosaic floor. Unlike the mosaics, there is no indication for where this marble grill is currently located, and thus brings up interesting questions about the objects we’ve lost (even if rather mundane or perhaps not desirable for museum collections, like, say, a marble grill) in our preoccupation with the mosaics, an irony considering that mosaics were not what was initially sought after in the initial excavations. Thus, in its entirety, the Hall of Philia presents a good case study for both investigating why these objects were not dispersed to various collections (perhaps simply because of their number) and also reconstructing the context through 3D modeling tools like SketchUp.
The second structure, the House of the Buffet Supper, presents an interesting case study for more complicated reasons. The House of the Buffet Supper is rich in mosaics and contains sculptures, many of which are seemingly not attributed to any museum repository, thus begging the question of exactly where these objects are and why they are not on display. The more interesting piece in the puzzle comes with where the mosaics from this structure were distributed. The usual players are present: the Hatay Archaeology Museum in Turkey and the Baltimore Museum of Art. However, there is also another, more curious player involved: Villanova University, Havana, Cuba. A find card associated with the mosaics indicates that it was sold to “Villa Nova College, Havana” in 1956. A preliminary Google search does not give much information about this place, and indeed, a cursory look makes it difficult to track whether this was indeed a real location at all. However, based on correspondences with both the director of the Princeton VRC and a fellow History of Art colleague, the university was likely the Universidad Católica de Santo Tomás de Villanueva, founded in 1946 by American Augustinians with the help of European Augustinians, but no longer open. Thus, one of my next steps is tracing this object’s journey.
Excavation view of central mosaic panel in Room B5, sold in 1956 to Cuba
Find card of mosaic floor of Room B5
Ella Gonzalez