Our Crowdfunding Groups
Thank you for your interest in this Momentum crowdfunding project. Even though this campaign has ended, you can still support the Michael C. Carlos Museum Exhibitions (MCCM Exhibitions) Fund by making a gift here today!
Your support for the Senusret Collection will advance Emory’s role as an international resource for the study of ancient Egyptian art and culture. An anonymous Carlos Museum donor is offering a GivingTuesday challenge of $2,500. If the fundraising goal of $9,500 is achieved by the end of this week, another $2,500 will be added to our total.
In 2018, the Michael C. Carlos Museum received one of the most important gifts in its history: an extensive private collection of antiquities known as the Senusret Collection, donated by the Georges Ricard Foundation. Right now, Carlos Museum curators and conservators and Emory faculty and students are working to research and conserve the many fine objects in the collection. In spring 2023, the Carlos Museum will present these works in the major exhibition Life and the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection. Please consider a gift to support the research and display of this transformative collection.
The Senusret Collection was assembled by French industrialist Georges Ricard in the 1970s. It is named after the workmen’s village Hetep-Senusret in Fayum, Egypt, home to workmen on the pyramid of pharaoh Senusret II. Highlights include Late Period coffins with mummies, gilded funerary masks, finely crafted bronze statuettes of deities, exquisite New Kingdom relief stele, ancient gold jewelry, and an encyclopedic collection of ancient glass. Following an extensive search for a permanent home for the collection, the Georges Ricard Foundation selected the Carlos Museum:
“We never intended or imagined the Senusret Collection would leave California, but once we met the Carlos Museum staff, the unthinkable turned into the compelling. Although we didn’t want to part with the collection, we soon became convinced that entrusting it to the Carlos was a golden opportunity to realize all the hopes and dreams Georges had for it since its arrival in the United States more than 30 years ago. Nowhere else could we find such a cohesive, dedicated, and creative team of consummate professionals on a mission not only to lovingly preserve our world’s cultural heritage but also to use collections to ignite imaginations, convey meaning, elicit emotion, and inspire reflection.” –Yann Ricard
Dr. Melinda Hartwig, Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art at the Carlos Museum, is leading the research on the Senusret Collection. An internationally renowned Egyptologist, Dr. Hartwig has worked on a wide range of archaeological sites, led projects in painted Egyptian Theban tombs for 40 years, is author and editor of numerous books, and appears regularly in documentaries about ancient Egypt.
The Carlos Museum’s expert team of conservators is currently stabilizing and treating the fragile works in the collection to prepare them for the upcoming exhibition as well as their eventual display in the Carlos Museum’s permanent Galleries of Ancient Egyptian and Nubian Art.
Life and the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection will explore the rituals and customs as well as the deep connections between life and death in the ancient Egyptian world. A wide range of public programs will accompany the exhibition, including lectures by distinguished national and international scholars, tours for K-12 schools, teacher and family workshops, and performances. Programming will draw on the intellectual strength of Emory University’s several faculty whose research centers on ancient Egypt and the Near East.
Your gift will help advance Emory’s role as an international resource for the study of ancient Egyptian art and culture by supporting this new initiative at the Carlos Museum.
There are approximately 1,500 artifacts in the entire Senusret Collection
2023 will be the start of the Senusret Collection exhibition at the Carlos Museum