Highlights Tour: San Antonio Museum of Art, Friday, July 22, 10:30 am - 11:30 am. Tour is for FHNN and LFV members and volunteers only and is part of our collaboration. To register, email information.fhnn@gmail.com with "Highlights" in the subject line.
Enjoy a docent-led tour of highlights of the rich collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA). The museum — which spans 5,000 years of global history and culture — is renowned for having the most comprehensive ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art collection in the southern United States. It also houses a fabulous Latin American art wing and contemporary galleries. Recently, SAMA has been in the news because of its temporary display of a 2,000-year-old Roman portrait head that has a strange backstory. In 2018, Texas antiques dealer Laura Young found a missing relic at a Texas Goodwill store, where she purchased it for about $35. Pre-World War II, the marble sculpture stood in an idealized replica of a Roman villa (called the Pompejanum) built by Ludwig I of Bavaria in Aschaffenburg, Germany. During the war, the villa was heavily bombed by Allied forces and the bust disappeared. The most likely scenario is that a returning US soldier brought the sculpture from Germany to Texas, where it remained unknown until 2018.