The 11 new items include antiquities from Roman Spain—a fascinating and under-studied area of the ancient Mediterranean basin, according to the museum’s curator, Jennifer Udell. There are also new pieces of Greek and Roman sculpture from the Brooklyn Museum.

A Welcoming Space for All  

Udell said the museum has attracted some “regulars”—students who stop by often and help out around the space. Some have even helped to install the objects, getting the rare opportunity to unbox and arrange pieces of pottery and glass created by human hands thousands of years ago. 

One such student is senior Grace Monteith. When the museum reopened in 2022 after the pandemic, she helped with the reinstallation. “The unpacking was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Dr. Udell took a picture of me and it’s everywhere on my social media. It’s the coolest,” she said. 

First-Hand Encounters with Antiquities

The museum is a teaching collection that creates unique experiential learning opportunities. Professors in several academic departments bring their classes to the museum, and Udell herself teaches courses in museum studies and other subjects. Like business students who gain experience on the Gabelli School trading floors, students who take a museum studies class with Udell get to work with the objects, make decisions about how they’re presented, and curate a group exhibit at the end of the semester. 

One group of students, Udell’s interns for this semester, are at work on an interactive new development: a mobile app through Bloomberg Connects that will offer museum visitors a guided tour of the collection. They’re putting together audio and video content that will provide historical context and highlight points of interest. 

Udell says the tour will not just be for art history students. The app will have information about theatrical masks for theater majors, ancient glass objects for those interested in organic chemistry, and even something for students studying finance. “We have a cuneiform tablet that’s a receipt for a bundle of reeds. It’s not crypto, but it is ancient economies,” she said. 

New Wonders with Each Visit 

For senior Ryan Moore, visiting the museum never gets old. “Every time I come I notice something new that I’ve never seen before,” said Moore, who helped to reinstall the objects for the reopening in 2022. He pointed to a case he’d helped to arrange, noting the way a sculpture’s wings parted to create the perfect opening through which the object in the background could be seen unobstructed. 

“That’s an arrangement I happened on by chance,” he said. “It’s something I’m still proud of to this day.”  

The Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art will reopen in the Walsh Family Library after a renovation, once again displaying antiquities dating back to the 10th century B.C. On view in its new glass cases will be Greek ceramic jars from 400 B.C.E., Roman coins, amulets and jewelry from the 1st century B.C., and more.

The museum has offered the hands-on experience to Fordham classes over the years, with students curating exhibits on classical objects, including one last year dedicated to ancient glass.

Classes will once again be able to meet directly in the museum, a large conference table surrounded by exhibits.

“The important thing about teaching from the objects is that nothing makes students more excited about the ancient world than being able to handle something that is 2,500 years old,” said Jennifer Udell, Ph.D., the museum’s curator.

The renovation of the museum, which first opened in 2007, has improved its display cases, brightened the space significantly, and made possible the display of objects that had not previously been viewed by the public.

The original collection, which featured more than 260 antiquities dating from the 10th century B.C. through the 3rd century, was a gift from William D. Walsh, FCRH ’51, and his wife Jane. It grew over the years as the museum received several major gifts, including a 2014 gift of nine mosaics from the 5th century. In 2018, the museum received a collection of 118 objects comprised of small terracotta and bronze figurines and Roman glass.

Udell said that the items in the 2018 acquisition were an important addition to the museum’s holdings, but many were kept in storage because the museum lacked space to display them. But in 2021, Udell learned that she’d have a lot more space to spare.

Helping Resolve An Art Trafficking Case

In September 2021, Udell shared in a blog post that the museum had closed its doors on June 1. That day, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized 99 objects in the collection as evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation of a trafficker in ancient art.

Three months later, those objects and 61 more from other institutions, tied to Edoardo Almagià, a Rome-based antiquities dealer, were repatriated to the Italian Government.

Rethinking How to Show Objects

For Udell, the loss of the items was an opportunity for reinvention.

“Everybody said ‘Do you still have a museum? And I said, ‘Yes, we just have a different museum, with different types of material. The new install has given me a way to rethink how we show objects.”

Thanks to the generosity of Mark and Esther Villamar, she was able to purchase custom-made display cases that are brighter, more secure, and accessible from the back, for easier access. Carpeting has been replaced with polished concrete floors, and a large conference table has been installed in an alcove.

When it came to organizing the objects, Udell started with a description of Walsh’s original collection.

“Once you start putting objects in a case, then you have to see how things evolve. It’s difficult to plan from the get-go, and say ‘Ok, this is going to go here and that’s gonna go there.’ I kind of let it evolve organically,” she said.

That means pairing for the first time together the ram head drinking cup with an Askos (flask) with Nike figurines and Medusa heads in relief dating back to B.C.E. 300. An Etruscan Amphora (jar with two handles) from circa 650 B.C.E. is now the centerpiece of a case centering on Etruscan burial ceremonies.

In one of the cases, Udell grouped together never before displayed implements and tools, including spear blades, a cosmetic applicator, a neolithic spoon, and a flint hand axe dating back from 300,000 to 150,000 BCE.

Another new display features half a dozen pieces that are in fact forgeries.

“Were they specific forgeries or were they just tourist trinkets that then over time were viewed as deliberate fakes? Who knows?” she said.

“So this is fun to look at with students and to say, ‘Why aren’t they genuine?

This is the Real Thing

Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham Libraries, noted that the initial creation of the museum was the first major renovation to the Walsh Library, as the space was originally designed to be a periodical reading room. Many spaces in the building have been updated since then, so it made perfect sense to update this space now.

“This gave us entrée to rethink and reexamine everything that was in there, and go in the direction that it was inevitably destined to go—not just as a place to view beautiful things, but as an arm of teaching and learning,” she said.

“Whether you have a student who’s just inches away from an Etruscan vase as someone is turning it and showing it from every angle, or you have a medieval manuscript placed in front of them and you’re turning the pages, you’re allowing them to interact directly with history,” she said.

“This is the real thing.”

For Udell, the renovation is everything she wanted to create when she first arrived in 2007. The display cases have room for more objects, and Udell has secured loans for objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will arrive in September. She anticipates working with other institutions in the future as well.

“There are lots of exciting collaborative things happening with other New York City institutions, so I’m excited about that,” she said.

“And I’m just excited about being able to unveil this collection in its best aesthetic possibility.”

As part of a seminar class, students learned firsthand about everything involved in putting on a modern exhibit, including digital technology that helps bring the exhibit to life. And they studied objects that revealed the ingenuity of ancient artisans—like, for instance, the maker of a clay vase that’s so well crafted it appears to be metal.

“I thought that was amazing that 2,500 years after it was created, I’m still fooled by the artist,” said Michael Sheridan, one of 18 students who organized an exhibit at Fordham’s Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art.

“The Classical World in 24 Objects,” the first student-curated antiquities exhibition at the museum, is the culmination of a seminar class in museum studies and ancient art. Kicked off with a reception on May 6, the exhibition runs through July 14.

Students curated objects that they picked from the museum’s collection—researching their history, writing the display text to accompany them, and helping to design the display in a newly created gallery at the museum, among other tasks.

“They were involved every step of the way,” said Jennifer Udell, PhD, curator of university art and the seminar’s instructor. She was able to realize her longstanding idea for the project this semester because of a gift from Fordham Trustee Fellow Robert F. Long, GABELLI ’63, and his wife, Katherine G. Long. The gift funded the creation of the special exhibitions gallery, which occupies a recessed area inside the Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art.

The students picked diverse objects including Roman imperial portraits, luxury household items made of bronze, and quotidian objects like coins and painted pottery. The ornate vase—or kernos—that caught Sheridan’s interest holds a few separate compartments for food, typically offered up to the goddess of the harvest.

“We have some great examples of what life really was like for the ancients” in both the high and low strata of society, said Sheridan, a sophomore double-majoring in history and art history. “So it’s just an interesting insight into a different people group from a different time. Most universities don’t have anything like this, so we really are lucky to have this collection here.”

One of the students, Michael Ceraso, got the idea for making an app to accompany the exhibit because he was taking an app-development class offered for free at Fordham by CodePath University. He teamed up with another student in the app class, Michael Gonzales, to develop the app, which runs on three iPods that are available in the gallery.

In addition to options for searching and sorting among the objects and reading detailed information about them, the app offers audio recordings in which each student explains why he or she chose that object and what makes it interesting.

The library staff was helpful in allowing the app to access the library’s online information about its collection, said Gonzales, a junior majoring in computer science. “It could be a great teaching tool for anyone who’s interested in the museum,” he said.

In addition to putting together the displays, students traveled to other museums and learned about legal and ethical issues—like minimizing looting—surrounding the provenance of artifacts.

The seminar involved a lot of back-and-forth among the students about why their selected pieces were interesting and what the exhibit’s approach should be, said sophomore Masha Bychkova, who plans to go to law school and practice art law.

“It was nice to collaborate with everyone to create an exhibit that encompassed the whole society during these times,” she said.

Fordham University has acquired its first Christian artifacts from antiquity: nine mosaics from a church built in the fifth century, a time when Christian art was still inflected with pagan images and the cross had yet to become the dominant symbol of the faith.

The mosaics formed part of a church floor located in what is now northwest Syria. An anonymous donor gave them to Fordham’s Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art in December, expanding the historical sweep of a collection that was already the largest of its type among universities in the New York region.

“They’re evidence of very, very early Christianity in the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean, so they’re exciting for that,” said Jennifer Udell, Ph.D., curator of university art. “It certainly is proof of an established religion gaining hold, and being an important enough religion to engender building projects with beautiful mosaics. We didn’t have anything like them so they’ve really increased the scope of our holdings.”

Located at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, the Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art already contains more than 260 objects, dating from the 10th century B.C. through the third century A.D., that illustrate the material culture of the ancient Mediterranean region.

The nine new pieces, with their pictures and inscriptions, offer a window into a transitional time in the church. Seven of the mosaics show animals or geometric shapes, making them typical of a period in which church floors generally featured things like flora and fauna or sunbursts, said Michael Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology. Generally absent are images of Christ, the cross, or human figures.

“One thing they clearly are emphasizing is the idea of new creation and paradise,” he said. “There’s that sense of, Christians are a new creation, they’re newly born, they’re inhabiting this Garden of Eden again, and that comes out pretty strongly.”

Udell noted that one of the mosaics shows a peacock, “which early on became a symbol of the resurrection.” In an example of how motifs crossed religious boundaries at the time, she said, the peacock image was also popular in synagogues.

“Religious art still [was]sort of adopting motifs from the Greco-Roman world, which was all pagan in the eyes of the Christians,” she said. “So you’re looking at objects that are harnessing a visual language that was familiar to the population at the time. It makes a lot of sense that the early church fathers and early leaders of Christianity would want to appeal to the broader population by using familiar visual imagery.”

The other two mosaics are inscribed with valuable information, Peppard said: the names of four church officials, the name of the benefactor who paid for the church’s construction, and the date it was built. (That would be the month of Apellaios in the 775th year following the region’s conquest by Alexander the Great, equivalent to December of 463 A.D.)

The name of the bishop cited in the mosaics, Epiphanius, was common at the time but probably denotes Epiphanius, bishop of Apamea in the 450s and 460s. Peppard and Udell are conducting research to answer this and other questions about the mosaics.

The text also mentions another official, the periodeutês—a kind of auxiliary bishop—who provided pastoral care for rural churches in Syria at the time, according to Peppard. It’s an office that was prominent for a few hundred years before fading away, although its name is still used by modern-day Maronite  Catholics, he said.

“[In these mosaics] we have kind of everything you want as a historian,” he said. “We have five proper names and a date, and those things are not to be taken for granted in history.”

The mosaics also provide great examples of epigraphy for students of the classics to examine, Udell said. “It’s going to be pretty exciting for students of the classics and religion to actually study something that’s material, instead of just text.”

Editor’s Note

In light of the present civil conflict in Syria and legitimate concerns for the security of that country’s ancient archaeological sites and artifacts, it should be noted that the recent gift to Fordham of the nine mosaics described in the above article was accepted following a thorough provenance review in accordance with University policy and careful examination of accompanying, official documentation attesting to the mosaics’ legal export to the United States in 1972. 

 Eyewitness testimony and other evidence further point to their excavation no later than 1968. A forthcoming article in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (Journal for Papyrology and Epigraphy) by Fordham theology professor Michael Peppard, Ph.D., and a future article by Jennifer Udell, Ph.D., curator of University art, will offer thorough examinations of the mosaics’ ancient and modern histories.

As in the past, the office will offer University alumni and friends some programming that includes tours of a few august institutions, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as trips to eateries, like Mario Batali’s Eataly.

The twist is that, this year, Fordham experts will lead the expeditions.

“We want alumni to know that Fordham is not just a stop for four years,” said Michael Griffin, assistant vice president for alumni relations. “We want to provide a measure of lifelong learning, and what a great place to do it, here in New York City.”

While anyone can take a guided tour through the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries, only the Fordham community can get a tour from Jennifer Udell, Ph.D., curator of University art and a noted specialist in Greco-Roman art.

Complimenting Udell’s April 3 tour will be the tour of the museum’s Italian Renaissance galleries to be given on May 9 by Gregory Waldrop, S.J., assistant professor of art history and music, who specializes in that particular period.

“Fordham students learn to be curious and that’s something that stays with them,” said Father Waldrop. “So it’s always a pleasure to have a chance to reconnect alumni with that tradition.”

Both historians hold an intimate knowledge of the museum’s holdings and the historical context from which they sprung. For his part, Father Waldrop spends a lot of time at the Met for his own research and teaching.

“New York City museums have some of the best collections in the world,” said Father Waldrop. “The Met certainly has the best collection of Italian works outside of Italy. It’s easily in the same league as London’s National Gallery and the Louvre.”

Elsewhere on the docket are: an April 11 backstage tour of WFUV by station manager Chuck Singleton; a demonstration of the new University organ, with Robert Minotti, director of Fordham University Choirs, on May 6; and a tour of the Upper West Side on May 21 with James Fisher, Ph.D., professor of theology and author of On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cornell University Press, 2009).

Associate Professor of History David Hamlin, Ph.D., will give a tour of the New-York Historical Society’s World War II exhibit on May 14. Hamlin said it’s rare that faculty get the chance to reconnect with the alumni in a learning environment.

“I’m very much looking forward to this. Once we shoo students out the door we don’t see them very often, so it’ll be great to see and meet our handiwork,” said Hamlin. “One way to see if we’re doing our job is to meet students 20 years after they leave Fordham, and see how they’re engaged. We’re trying to construct citizens here—people who are curious about the world [and]maintain a lifelong interest in learning.”

Griffin said that Explore NYC has siblings in other alumni programming initiatives, such as the Fordham at the Forefront events. That traveling lecture series takes Fordham experts out of town, providing a platform from which they can weigh in on current events.

As a doctoral student in art history, Jennifer Udell learned to spot the clues in ancient Greek vase paintings that helped unravel a narrative story—things such as the season, time of day and even the ritual being depicted. Such expertise was just what Fordham was looking for to help shape its growing art collection.

Udell, a former curatorial assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is Fordham’s first art curator. Since arriving last June, she has overseen the creation and organization of the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, which opened Dec. 6 on the Rose Hill campus. Now she is writing an accompanying catalog that will feature 60 to 70 of the museum’s most representative pieces and will be published by Fordham University Press later this year.

Udell believes the museum will generate interest from scholars and the public alike. “New material is always exciting,” she said of the museum collection. “Scholars will want to see it because it is fresh material to work into their research. It can also involve and benefit the surrounding community.”

While Fordham does not actively collect art, it has received several art gifts from donors, Udell said. Among the University’s 710 holdings are paintings by Benjamin West, famous for his colonial-era portraits; drawings by American artist John Trumbull; and one etching by Rembrandt Van Ryn. Following the museum catalog project, Udell will organize, catalog and conserve all of Fordham’s holdings.

Udell also hopes to help mount an exhibition that will raise Fordham’s profile in the art world, such as a collaboration with New York University or another high-profile university collection. “It would be a dream exhibit,” she said. “And would show off the Fordham academic community to everybody.”

• A terracotta patera (shallow bowl) with knob handles, ca. 340 B.C.;
• A kylix (drinking cup with two handles), attributed to the Painter of Berlin 2268, a vase painter of the late sixth century B.C.;
• A portrait of Julia Aquilia Severa, the second and fourth wife of Emperor Elagabalus, A.D. 220-222; and
• A portrait of the emperor Hadrian from the second century A.D.

The collection was donated by Fordham alumnus William D. Walsh (FCRH ’51), and his wife Jane, longtime benefactors of the University.

Among those who were in attendance were Walsh, President Joseph M. McShane, S.J., John Tognino, chair of the Fordham Board of Trustees, and Jennifer Udell, curator of University art. Other invited guests included all members of the Board of Trustees and the President’s Council; representatives of New York City cultural and political institutions; and additional members of the Walsh family.

A Bronx native, Walsh is the founder and general partner of Sequoia Associates, a private investment firm in Menlo Park, Calif. He amassed his collection over a period of three decades, keeping it at his home until donating it to the University in the spring.

A special media preview of the new Museum took place on Dec. 5. Articles about the collection appeared in the New York Times  and the New York Sun.

Information about visiting the Museum can be obtained by calling 718-817-3590.