Public Programs @ The Institute
Series: Ancient Seminar
Speaker: Patricia Eunji Kim, Assistant Professor, New York University
Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 6:00pm
What does queenship mean to you? Opening to the public in 2027, Ancient Queenship: Art, Power, and Presenc is a special exhibition that explores the myriad representations of royal women in the ancient Mediterranean world throughout the first millennium BCE. The exhibition brings together art, artifacts, and media from a broad and interconnected political and cultural landscape—from Greece to Egypt and Anatolia to Mesopotamia—in order to inaugurate a new way of understanding articulations of power in the ancient world. Ancient Queenship also presents how the legacy of ancient queens impacts the art and culture of modern and contemporary societies. Bringing together ancient and contemporary works encourages visitors to confront the mythologizations and appropriations of ancient queens and their images. Moreover, the featured works by contemporary artists experiment with notions of queenship in order to interrogate social power dynamics, speculating what an equitable world might entail. What results is an exploration of how the fragmentary traces of ancient queenship have been—and continue to be—mobilized through time and space to different ends.
Join co-curator and NYU Gallatin professor Patricia Kim for a discussion about the foundations, themes, and concerns of the exhibition, as well as a presentation about the processes of curating a show about antiquity, women, and transhistorical reception for broader audiences. What are the challenges and joys of curatorial work? How can we ensure accessibility and legibility of complex concepts for broader audiences? What are the stakes of presenting stories about queenship to the public in our present world? This preview of Ancient Queenship aims to examine these questions about the intersections of curatorial practice and historical work, all while collectively pondering what queenship means today.
Ancient Queenship: Art, Power, and Presence is presented by the Cincinnati Art Museum, and will open to the public in 2027 at the Getty Villa and the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Patricia Eunji Kim, PhD is an art historian, curator, and educator based in New York City. She is Assistant Professor at New York University and author of The Art of Queenship in the Hellenistic World (Cambridge University Press, 2025), the first book-length study on the visual and material culture of queenship from western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean from the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE. This research project has led to a suite of other publications, an arts-driven public symposium, and a forthcoming exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Getty Villa that will open to the public in 2027. Professor Kim’s research has been recognized with awards and fellowships from Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
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