Art Review: ‘Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins’ at Getty Museum

In Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins, the new exhibition at the Getty Villa, the Getty does indeed start at the very beginning. At a place in what we now call Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and between 3400 and 3000 b.c., urban life began as well as writing and sophisticated architecture. It’s an impressive show. It’s both gorgeous and coherent, and I’m finding this combination rarer and rarer. The scholarship is first-rate and conveyed clearly and accessibly in a catalogue that’s now a core reference. The Getty collaborated with the Louvre on the project. It’s one of only a handful of museums in America with the money, discipline, connections, and scholarly chops to make something of this depth and complexity happen.

The history of Mesopotamia tends to be missing except in the most donnish curricula, strange considering that the first historians were Mesopotamian, and, after all, it bears repeating, “Civilization begins.” What I knew before I saw the show is from the Old Testament. Eden, the Tower of Babel, and Nineveh are all in the ’hood. Babylon was the world’s New York, Paris, and Shanghai, as well as Sin City.

In Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins, the new exhibition at the Getty Villa, the Getty does indeed start at the very beginning. At a place in what we now call Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and between 3400 and 3000 b.c., urban life began as well as writing and sophisticated architecture. It’s an impressive show. It’s both gorgeous and coherent, and I’m finding this combination rarer and rarer. The scholarship is first-rate and conveyed clearly and accessibly in a catalogue that’s now a core reference. The Getty collaborated with the Louvre on the project. It’s one of only a handful of museums in America with the money, discipline, connections, and scholarly chops to make something of this depth and complexity happen.

The history of Mesopotamia tends to be missing except in the most donnish curricula, strange considering that the first historians were Mesopotamian, and, after all, it bears repeating, “Civilization begins.” What I knew before I saw the show is from the Old Testament. Eden, the Tower of Babel, and Nineveh are all in the ’hood. Babylon was the world’s New York, Paris, and Shanghai, as well as Sin City.