San Antonio Museum of Art Showcases Assyrian Relief from Nimrud Through 2028

A single Assyrian alabaster relief, lent by the Art Institute of Chicago, anchors "Kingship and Power in Ancient Assyria" at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), on view through May 17, 2028. The 26 1/2 by 23 by 2 inch carving depicts the head of a winged, bearded figure—an apkallu, interpreted as a semi-divine sage or guardian spirit—from the Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud. It belonged to "Room S," a small private chamber near the throne room. Nimrud, called Kalhu in the Bible and located 20 miles south of Mosul in modern Iraq, served as the Neo-Assyrian capital; the palace was built in the ninth century BCE and adorned with carvings of military conquests and royal lion hunts. In 2015, ISIS packed the site with 55-gallon drums of explosives and destroyed it, reducing 3,000 years of history to debris. Fragments excavated earlier, like this one, survived. The exhibition also evokes Michael Rakowitz's ongoing project recreating destroyed Iraqi artifacts from food packaging, and SAMA hosted Brian Michael Lione of the Nimrud Rescue Project, launched in 2017 by the Smithsonian Institution with the Iraqi Ministry of Culture.