Visual Arts - Everything old is new again

The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University is a sanctuary of the ancient in a city fatally in love with the tear-down. And its plethora of Greek and Roman antiquities consistently earns it a top five slot among university-owned classical art collections.

In consultation with the building’s architect, Michael Graves, the museum’s Greek and Roman Art Galleries have been renovated and redesigned, giving the institution a suitably elegant stage on which to showcase its riches — 100 of them recently acquired by Oxford and NYU-educated curator Dr. Jasper Gaunt.

Gaunt was hired in 2001 to, in a nutshell, buy new old stuff. An ironic expert in antiquities, considering his own youthful appearance, Gaunt is also possessed of the kind of marvelously understated British wit that can make perfectly respectable matters sound deliciously naughty. For example, he described the recent acquisition of a second-century B.C. Greek marble muse as so skillfully rendered, her tunic appears to cling to her flesh like “a wet T-shirt.” Gaunt lectures frequently on antiquities at the Carlos and his enthusiasm for the material makes his an act worth catching.

As understatedly posh as a high-end boutique, the revamped galleries highlight small satellite alcoves featuring work ranging from the breathtaking to those more evocative of the wares for sale in an Athens tourist trap than the antiquities the tchotchkes reference.

When thinking of classical antiquities, many may imagine the epic, but there are several works in the new exhibition of astounding diminutiveness, like a garnet portrait so tiny a magnifying glass is provided to view it, and a pair of ivory Roman dice, a charming historical artifact that may inspire viewers to save their own plastic swivel sticks and hotel ashtrays for inclusion in the future’s gallery of cultural ephemera.

Most will have to take the word of antiquities scholars that the bust of the Roman emperor on view for the first time is “the finest likeness of Tiberius in existence.” Like so many pieces in the collection, these objects, both epic and minute, offer the most metaphysical form of escapism. Time seems to stand still in the serene womb of the Carlos, as viewers contemplate eternity forged into object.The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory’s Greek and Roman Art Galleries, 571 S. Kilgo Circle, Emory University. Tues.-Wed., Fri.-Sat, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m. $5 donation. 404-727-4282. www.emory.edu/CARLOS.