Cameos were, and still are, especially prized when the artist manipulated the strata of the stone in relation to the design, exploring the stone’s depths to enhance its visual impact.

Roman cameo glass was difficult to produce; the creation of a multilayered matrix presented considerable technical challenges, and the carving of the finished glass required a great deal of skill.

The Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts oversees roughly 250 small, wondrously wrought hard-stone cameos dating from the Renaissance to the Victorian era, a collection that outshines that of any other American museum. It was with a view toward bringing these cameos to greater attention that in 2005 James David Draper, Henry R. Kravis Curator in the department, arranged a survey of about 100 examples in the gallery devoted to periodic showings of the department's possessions, subsequently endowed as the Wrightsman Exhibition Gallery. Drawing also upon the resources of the departments of Greek and Roman Art, Medieval Art, and American Art, as well as the Robert Lehman Collection, the Museum at one stroke was able to demonstrate the origins of cameos in classical antiquity, their rare occurrences in the Middle Ages, their efflorescence from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and their spread to the New World. The exhibition of cameos proved to be well liked by visitors, and it would have been a disservice to scholarship if it had left no record, particularly as the objects themselves are not only eloquently evocative of past civilizations but also extremely photogenic. The situation is now redressed by this Bulletin.

Curatorial Fellow Alzahraa K. Ahmed explores the role of the camel in the annual Muslim pilgrimage commemorating the new year.

Celebrate Black creative expression with two new poems responding to works in the collection

From their architecture, furniture, and textile designs to their photography and corporate design, the husband-and-wife team exerted a profound influence on the visual character of daily life in America, whether at work or at home.

Assistant Horticulturist Carly Still recounts a recent trip to Chile, where she observed the annual harvest of almonds at a local orchard.

Since the acquisition of exotic creatures was very expensive, they would often be sent to menageries or zoological gardens around Rome to be tamed and trained for public entertainment before they reached the games, where death was inevitable.

Although she may have taken up photography as an amateur and sought to apply it to the noble noncommercial aims of art, [Julia Margaret Cameron] immediately viewed her activity as a professional one, vigorously copyrighting, exhibiting, publishing, and marketing her photographs.