Pompeii body casts
Image: Benjamin Healley
Source: Museum Victoria
The Hon. John Brumby, Premier of Victoria, today announced that a major exhibition, A Day in Pompeii, will be staged at Melbourne Museum as part of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series in 2009.
To celebrate the exhibition’s announcement, visitors to Melbourne Museum will have the unique opportunity to view a body cast of two women who were among nine victims found in the garden of the House of Cryptoporticus.
The cast, which has been flown in especially from Pompeii, will be on display in Melbourne Museum’s Mind and Body Gallery for the next two months.
On August 24, A.D. 79, the Roman city of Pompeii was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The pumice and thick volcanic ash that ended the lives of so many also encased the city in a virtual time capsule for the next 17 centuries. The city remained largely lost and forgotten until rediscovered by archaeologists in the early 1700s, resulting in Pompeii today being one of the most complete and intact archaeological sites in the world.
‘This exhibition is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Roman treasures from almost 2000 years ago,’ said Dr Patrick Greene, CEO, Museum Victoria.
The exhibition will be developed by Museum Victoria in partnership with the Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompeii, and will feature over 250 objects from daily life in Pompeii and surrounds, as well as a number of body casts.
A Day in Pompeii will be on display at Melbourne Museum from 26 June to 11 October 2009.
Melbourne Winter Masterpieces is a Victorian Government initiative and is exclusive to Melbourne, Australia.
Presented in association with the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei.