Important Collection of Ancient Iranian Objects on Display

The nation's premier archaeological collection of artifacts from civilizations that flourished in what is now Iran are now on display in the newly renovated Persian Gallery reopens at the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, 1155 E. 58th St, Chicago, Illinois.

Several hundred items, many of them never before seen by the public, will illustrate the range of artistic styles that flourished in the area from the seventh millennium B.C. through the 10th century A.D. Items that will be placed on display for the first time include elaborate bronze and bone votive pins from the isolated mountain shrine at Surkh Dum-i-Luri (1000-500 B.C.) and richly painted pottery from Istakhr, an important city in the plain of Fars during the early Islamic period (7th-10th centuries A.D.).

Roughly half the gallery will be devoted to artifacts from the Achaemenid palace complex at the city of Persepolis, which flourished from about 520 B.C. until it was destroyed by Alexander the Great and his troops in 331 B.C. This portion of the gallery is dominated by a series of colossal sculptures made of polished black limestone, including the head of a stone bull that once guarded the entrance to the hundred-columned Throne Hall and column capitals in the forms of bulls and composite creatures. The gallery also will display examples of the world's earliest coinage, part of the treasury of the vast Persian Empire, which at its height stretched from the Indus Valley to the Aegean Sea.

The gallery will place special emphasis on the work of Oriental Institute archaeologists who began exploring the region in the 1930s. Their work ranged from air reconnaissance in 1935-37 to archaeological expeditions conducted through 1978. One of the displays based on Oriental Institute field projects will feature the site of Chogha Mish in southwestern Iran, which was excavated between 1961 and 1978. The site yielded important evidence of the development of administrative record-keeping systems that eventually led to the invention of writing.

The Persian Gallery was closed along with the rest of the Oriental Institute Museum in 1996 for the installation of state-of-the-art climate control systems that are necessary to protect the collections from the damaging effects of Chicago's seasonal variations in temperature and relative humidity. In May 1999, the Joseph and Mary Grimshaw Egyptian Gallery opened to the public. The museum's other three galleries will open over the next two years as work on them is completed.

The Oriental Institute Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Wednesday; and from noon to 4 p.m Sunday. The Museum is closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Admission is free. For more information, call (773) 702-9514.