Spring 2013 - "The Part and the Whole: An Assyrian Synecdoche" by Lindsay Oxx, Class of 2014

Ms. Lindsay Oxx, Amherst College Class of 2014, unlocked a museum mystery by examining how and why one slab of the Mead's renowned group Assyrian palace reliefs was incorrectly restored in the 1850s and does not belong with the others. In this lecture, she demonstrates how this "alien" element, only recently recognized, sheds light on the reception and interpretation of these reliefs when they first arrived in bucolic Amherst from exotic Mesopotamia.
In January 2013, Ms. Oxx delivered a version of this lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Seattle, WA, as part of the first Undergraduate Paper Session. Her lecture at the Mead is co-sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, Western Massachusetts Society.