Public Programs @ The Institute

Series: Ancient Seminar

Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece
Seán Hemingway, John A. and Carole O. Moran Curator in Charge of the Department of Greek and Roman Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Thursday, December 3, 2026, 6:00pm

• RSVP for the Great Hall Exhibition event

This talk introduces a major international loan exhibition, entitled Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece, that will be on view to the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 20, 2026, through April 11, 2027. It explores the extraordinary skill and creativity of Greek artists from the eighth to the early fifth centuries BCE—a time of dynamic cultural interchange when the Greeks left their homeland for far-flung places across the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. A carefully selected panorama of exceptional works of art produced during this time illustrates how the ancient Greeks were exposed to tremendously diverse cultures, which were themselves constantly changing. Particular emphasis is placed on the myths that the Greeks used in this early period to shape their identity and how myths were represented in art. Tomb groups from each region provide snapshots of the kinds of artifacts that were circulating - both Greek and non-Greek - and Greek artifacts, especially bronzes, traveled far beyond the territories that they inhabited through a variety of networks.

Seán Hemingway is the John A. and Carole O. Moran Curator in Charge of the Department of Greek and Roman Art. A seasoned archaeologist, Dr. Hemingway has excavated prehistoric, classical, and Roman sites in Greece and Spain, and he is currently the metals specialist for the Anavlochos excavations in eastern Crete. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College with a major in Classical art and archaeology and his M.A. and doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. He studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens as a Fulbright Scholar and has twice been the MMA Visiting Curator at the American Academy in Rome. Seán worked for three years in the Department of Ancient Art at the Harvard University Art Museums before coming to the Met as an assistant curator in 1998.

As a curator in the Greek and Roman Department, Seán has assisted with the reinstallation of large parts of the permanent collection, including the Archaic and Classical Greek Galleries (1999), the Cypriot Galleries (2000) and the Hellenistic and Roman Galleries (2007). He has also curated special exhibitions including “Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age” (2011), “Sleeping Eros” (2013), “The Boxer: An Ancient Masterpiece” (2013) and was a lead curator for the exhibitions “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World” (2016), “Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color” (2021), “Cycladic Art: The Leonard N. Stern Collection on loan from the Hellenic Republic” (2022), and “Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece” (2026). Seán has a particular specialty in Greek and Roman bronzes and is the author of numerous scholarly publications, including a book on Hellenistic bronze sculpture, entitled, The Horse and Jockey from Artemision: A Bronze Equestrian Monument of the Hellenistic Period (University of California Press at Berkeley 2004), a novel, The Tomb of Alexander (Hutchinson 2012), and most recently, How To Read Greek Sculpture (The Met 2021).