The Transition to Christianity

The vibrant and complex life of the Eastern Mediterranean during a time of reinvention and renewal will be the subject of a major new exhibition at the Onassis Cultural Center in Midtown Manhattan in New York. The exhibition will bring together more than 170 exceptional objects on loan from Greek museums, as well as museums in Cyprus and the United States. Incorporating many outstanding works of art that have never before been seen outside Greece, as well as recently discovered works that are being exhibited for the first time anywhere, Transition to Christianity reveals a period of extraordinary and perhaps unexpected creativity in the Greek world of Late Antiquity. The extraordinary objects in the exhibition represent a wide range of media and functions: mosaics, paintings, sculptures, architectural elements, inscriptions, coins, liturgical objects, jewelry and domestic furnishings. Together, they reveal the creative ferment of the world of Late Antiquity, when a new society, religion and material culture were gradually replacing the old.