Michael C. Carlos Museum

One of the oldest museums in Georgia, the museum's collections date back to 1876, when a general museum known as Emory College Museum was established on Emory University's original campus in Oxford, Georgia. After the university was relocated to Atlanta, a small group of professors officially founded the Emory University Museum in 1919. The collections were housed and displayed in various buildings around the campus. A major expansion in 1993 transformed the museum into one of Atlanta's top arts institutions. Upon the new building's opening, the museum became known as the Michael C. Carlos Museum, named after its most generous patron. During the 1996 Summer Olympics, the museum presented two major exhibitions: one on the Emory campus highlighting the work of Thornton Dial and the other in City Hall East (now Ponce City Market) titled "Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South". Originally pitched to the High Museum of Art, the latter exhibit featured folk art and self-taught art from African-American artists across the American South, curated by local art collector William S. Arnett, and opened to "glowing reviews". In June 2022, it was announced that Henry Kim would be the new associate vice provost and director of the Museum beginning August 22, 2022. ==Collection and activities==

The museum's collections comprise more than 25,000 works, and the facility attracts 120,000 visitors annually. In addition to permanent and temporary exhibitions, the museum is a source of educational programming, providing lectures, symposia, workshops, performances, and festivals. The Carlos Museum also operates a teaching laboratory and conservation center, and publishes scholarly catalogues. The museum also brings art, history, and archaeology to the classroom of Georgia children through its outreach program, Art Odyssey. The Carlos Museum also runs Odyssey Online, a Website for school-age children that explores the various cultures reflected in the museum's collections. His remains are permanently on display in a plexiglass case at the Luxor Museum. On June 6, 2006 the museum purchased a headless statue of Venus, for $968,000 at a Sotheby's auction in New York. A private collector in Houston, Texas, agreed to sell to whoever purchased the body, the head as well, which was last documented attached to the body in 1836. The head was sold for an additional $50,000. ==Controversy over acquisitions==

in the Michael C. Carlos Museum, whose provenance has been identified as suspect. Christos Tsirogiannis, an expert on the illegal trade in antiquities at Ionian University, Greece, stated that the museum had failed to exercise "due diligence" in relation to suspicious acquisitions. In 2023, the Michael C. Carlos Museum returned an Assyrian ivory furniture applique to the government of Iraq following research which revealed that it had been looted from the Iraq Museum in 2006. On January 22, 2024, Emory University and the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic signed a long-term agreement of cultural cooperation, under which the museum returned a Minoan larnax, a statue of Terpsichore, and a statue of a seated figure, which were alleged to have been looted from Greece in the early 2000s. The agreement also provided for more educational opportunities for students. ==References==