Homecoming

The exhibition “Homecoming. Cycladic treasures on their return journey” opened on the 3rd of November 2022, and will last until October 31, 2023, at Museum of Cycladic Art, presenting 15 antiquities for the first time internationally.

It is the first step of the historic agreement between the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Museum of Cycladic Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (The Met), which was ratified by the Greek Parliament on September 9, 2022. The agreement foresees the gradual return to Greece of 161 Early Cycladic antiquities of unique archaeological value of the American collector Leonard Stern. Following this, the entire collection will be exhibited at The Met, before the final return of the entirety of these antiquities to Greece, their country of origin.

The exhibition includes rare exhibits which will bring new scientific knowledge to Early Cycladic art. Among them, there are types that could be described as unique, either as a whole or in their individual morphological characteristics, as they have not appeared before in the corpus of the known works of Early Cycladic culture.
The antiquities presented –ten marble figurines and five vases made of marble, steatite and clay– cover a wide chronological range, from the times of the Late Neolithic period to those of the Early Cycladic II period (c. 5300 – 2400/2300 BC). The figurines depict solely the female figure and belong to types and varieties corresponding to the styles of each period (schematic, precanonical, canonical), while the vases represent some of the most characteristic types of vessels covering the entire Early Cycladic period.