John Addington Symonds opened his landmark 1883 book A Problem in Greek Ethics by warning his fellow Victorians, "To ignore paiderastia is to neglect one of the features by which Greek civilisation was most sharply distinguished." Now, 124 years later, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is still guilty of that neglect. Although the cases are full of drawings depicting males together, often nude or half-clad, drinking wine side by side in bed, oiling each other up at the gym, the
display cards never acknowledge the widespread same-sex relationships that other museums tell their visitors were considered "honorable." Whenever Carlos Picón and his fellow
curators have an opportunity with this topic to illuminate and educate, they look away and abandon their visitors to silence. Even when the figures are drawn in isolation, as with the
youth alone on the interior and a girl peering into a jar on the exterior (56.171.61), the display card reads, "The decoration of vases used in symposia (drinking parties) draws liberally on the erotic aspect of these events. Faced with two shirtless men, drinking wine and reclining together on the same
sofa, one’s elbow resting on the other’s thigh, and beside them a third youth whose foot angling in somehow makes a claim on the sofa (14.130.13), the curators have nothing to say about it. In total, their summary reads, "The iconography follows Attic antecedents quite closely. The vases used for drinking, however, probably reflect contemporary local practice." A similar scene of a pair of half-nude older-younger males drinking together, reclining facing each other (96.18.143), inspires only this explanation: "The decoration of the exterior is carefully placed," with more detail about the
cup’s stand aligning with the edge of the sofa. When displaying the image of a naked athlete bending forward while pinching the tip of his penis (14.105.7), the curators may not be answering the questions foremost on viewers' minds by merely listing what can be seen: "The youth shown here has all the gear of an athlete-shoes, a staff, a pick to loosen the ground when it becomes too packed, an aryballos (oil flask), and a himation (cloak) neatly folded over the goalpost." And truly, in 2007, if they are going to refer to a drinking cup drawing as Youth Riding Cock (1981.11.10), showing a smiling teenager astride an enormous rooster, delicately stroking its huge neck sticking up between his legs, it feels disingenuous to say in the description, "The meaning is not evident, but the reference undoubtedly has to do with the cock as a gift of love."
One card does state, "The interior shows a man propositioning a youth," (52.11.4) yet the next sentence reverts to such clinical analysis ("The composition is admirable…") that readers may not be sure of the nature of that proposition. (Even the digital description of 09.221.38 highlights that time, "The cup shows the persistence of the theme of men and youths in the last quarter of the fifth century BC.") Yet once again the curators opt to ignore scholarship and erase
homosexuality from public display. Elsewhere, special sideline exhibits explain subjects such as "The World of Dionysos," "Roman Games and Pastimes," "Children in Hellenistic Art," and "Africans in the Hellenistic World." Undoubtedly these are worthy are important topics. Last summer the British Museum devoted an entire exhibit to The Warren Cup, a masterpiece of ancient Roman silverwork depicting two scenes of Hellenistic
male lovers fully engaged in the sexual act, which their display card discussed at length. Dyfri Williams, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the museum, wrote a short book on the cup, and he discussed homosexuality throughout, from the flap copy to final page where he mentioned other cultures such as in Han Dynasty China or pre-Meiji Japan that celebrated sex between men.
Giving somindication of the importance the British Museum placed on being able to add same-sex experience to the story of human culture, they paid 1.8 million pounds for The Warren Cup in 1999.
More summaries about the Erasing History at the Met