The Valchitran Treasure, the stone stele of Deines and the bronze head of the Thracian king Seuthes III are among the exhibits of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NAIM-BAS), which will be part of an exhibition of Thracian treasures at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, NAIM-BAS Director Assoc. Prof. Hristo Popov told the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) on Friday.
The exhibition is titled Ancient Thrace and the Classical World. Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, and will open November 4.
“We are not just one of the fourteen Bulgarian museums participating in the exhibition. The National Archaeological Institute with Museum is the main organizer on the Bulgarian side,” he noted.
He explained that the contract for the exhibition is trilaterial, between the Ministry of Culture, J. Paul Getty Museum and NAIM-BAS. "We have been assigned a key role both for the organization of the exhibition and for the general organization and logistics on Bulgarian territory, and the coordination between all Bulgarian institutions," explained Popov.
Fourteen museums from Bulgaria with a total of over 150 objects will participate in a forthcoming exhibition of Thracian treasures at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, USA. "Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece" will be on from November 3 to March 3, 2025.
As the organizer and coordinator of the Bulgarian exhibition in Los Angeles, the NAIM-BAS Director answered BTA's questions about the contacts with the J. Paul Getty Museum, the selection of the exhibits, NAIM-BAS's contribution to it and the technical part of the transportation and preparation of the monuments for the exhibition.
The road to Getty Museum
"I know it may sound boastful, but we really have a key role and that's been from the very beginning in 2018 when representatives of the Getty Foundation, the Getty Museum, came for the first time to share what ideas they had. They came to us first as a national institute and museum, after we made the contact with the Ministry of Culture and all the things started to happen step by step after we identified a common goal and a common desire to make this happen," explained Assoc. Prof. Popov.
Being the main coordinator and organizer for Bulgaria, he largely determined which of the Bulgarian museums would participate in the exhibition. "The idea was for the two curators, Assoc. Prof. Margarit Damyanov and Jeffrey Spier from the Getty Museum, to travel around the museums in the country to select exhibits that fit into the concept of the project. Then they checked whether those could travel, could participate in the exhibition - and from a wider range of monuments we slowly narrowed it down to 180.”
He clarified that in terms of volume this is not the largest exhibition on Ancient Thrace that had been done by the Bulgarian side. "But I would say it is one of the most important," the associate professor noted.
In his words, Bulgaria has a leading role in terms of Thracian cultural heritage because the ancient Thracian lands match today's Bulgarian territories. At the same time important and large parts of Ancient Thrace are on the territory of today's Turkiye, Greece and Romania.
"And it is very good that in a project, in which 90% of the exhibits are from Bulgarian museums, important institutions and museums from neighboring countries are also participating," said the NAIM-BAS director.
He added that the exhibition will also show exhibits from major world museums which have monuments of ancient Thracian culture: the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The NAIM-BAS exhibits
Hristo Popov does not know the exact number of the NAIM-BAS exibits in the Getty Museum exhibition. “I believe there are over 50,” he said.
"We start the story from earlier times, from the Bronze Age, when the Thracian ethnicity was formed. The first of the main monuments that NAIM-BAS shows is the Valchitran Treasure," he says.
It is Europe’s largest gold treasure from the Bronze Age, and currently the largest gold treasure in Bulgaria.
“There are also some important exhibits from the Late Bronze Age, mostly weapons: swords, rapiers. From the Thracian era itself, we have important exhibits from the iconic necropolis at Duvanli near Plovdiv, the wonderful gold breastplate from Mezek, which was in a tomb also discovered in the 1930s. We are showing a wonderful bronze hydria from the necropolis of ancient Mesambria, as well as an exhibit that was a very serious logistical challenge for the whole team and travels abroad for the first time: the stone stele of Deines, which is from the necropolis of Apollonia.”
According to him, the stele of Deines together with the metal frame with the wrapping weighs over 700 kg and is itself very bulky. "You can imagine the logistical challenge of shipping it,” said the associate professor.
Among the exhibits that NAIM-BAS is showing at Getty Museum is the inscription from Seuthopolis - one of the main written monuments related to classical Hellenistic Thrace, the silver amphora with gilding from the Mound of Kukova and the silver ornament from Bukyovtsi, which is well known and has participated in many exhibitions. “One of the most beautiful ornaments of Thracian antiquity, which we still know today,” the museum director says of the exhibit.
He believes, though, that the exhibit which is key to the line of narrative of the exhibition is the bronze head of Seuthes III from the Golyama Kosmatka mound near Kazanlak. "This is one of the most beautiful, not to say The most beautiful monument that is held by the National Archaeological Museum - a masterpiece on a truly world-class level that every museum in the world can be proud of," said Assoc. Prof. Popov.
The Getty Museum will also display the set of grave offerings that were found inside the Golyama Kosmatka. They are exhibits of the museum in Kazanlak.
Furthermore, the NAIM-BAS exhibits include the treasure with gilding from Galiche and two monuments already associated with the Roman era and the times when Thrace became a Roman province - a large stone stele of the Thracian horseman and one of the most beautiful chariots from the Roman era. This is the find from the village of Shishkovtsi near Kyustendil, he said.
According to him, it is good that the exhibition fits into a series of exhibitions that the Getty Museum has been organizing over the past few years and finds the idea the idea quite successful.
The selection
The museum director said that the selection of exhibits was a complex process. “We were told in advance how large the space in the Getty Museum would be, the showcases, and potentially how many exhibits and how many themes could be presented in that a space,” he said.
A tentative list was then made, and it had to be decided how important the particular exhibit is for the narrative of the exhibition itself, and how much important information about the history of ancient Thrace it can illustrate for visitors.
"Of course, it is not so much a question of whether an object is made of gold or silver and what its insurance value is, but rather what its cultural and historical value is and the importance of the information it carries in the overall narrative of the exhibition," says Assoc. Prof. Popov.
Then, the condition of the monuments had to be considered: whether it could travel or there are any obstacles, and how they could be overcome, he explained further.
Some of the exhibits picked for the exhibition have been restored with the help and funding of Getty Museum over the last two and a half years. "And their condition has been greatly improved," he says.
Once the list of selected exhibits was finalized, work began with the museums in whose holdings they are, to come to an agreement for participation in the exhibition.
"Of course, there were some artefacts that we would have liked to have participated, but for one reason or another they couldn't. One example is the Borovo Treasure which is very important, but is currently participating in another major exhibition in Chicago," he said.
He pointed out that about 80% of the preselected exhibits will be on display in Los Angeles.
The long trip to LA
In the words of the director of NAIM-BAS, the issue of security, which is also a large part of insurance, has always been a central issue in the work on the exhibition. Also from a purely logistical point of view, doing this exhibition was a serious challenge.
There were also technological issues with the transportation, the packaging, the conservation and restoration, the travel conditions. “These are important aspects of the process, involving dozens, not to say hundreds of people,” he added.
The last stretch
“We have been working on this exhibition for seven years. We went through COVID-19, we went through delays for various reasons. In the end, the right solutions were found and the exhibition is now about to come to life," said Hristo Popov.
The exhibits have been in Los Angeles for ten days now, and the NAIM-BAS hears regularly from its team in LA. “Together with colleagues from the Getty Museum, they are working on the creation of the exhibition itself, as this is also a complex technological process that requires time and skills, appropriate conditions. I know that the Getty Museum for the last few months has been working mainly on this: the showcases, design, important elements of a modern contemporary exposition,” the associate professor noted.
"We are waiting for the catalogue to come out any moment now. Some 70-80% of the texts in it have been contributed by leading Bulgarian scientists," says the director of NAIM-BAS.
Assoc. Prof. Hristo Popov has a Master's degree in history and has specialized in ancient history, Paleo-Balkan Studies, Thracian studies and archaeology at Sofia University. He is an alumnus of the Austrian Academic Exchange Programme (1999), of the Hetty and Alexander von Humboldt Foundations (Roman Herzog Scholarship for Young Scholars). Since December 2018 he has been Director of NAIM-BAS. He is a specialist in settlement archaeology and the archaeology of mining and the use of mineral resources in different historical periods. He has been a supervisor at various archaeological sites. In 2016, he elected a corresponding member of the German Institute of Archaeology.
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