Goodwill Roman bust find a career highlight for Sask. art historian – Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

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When Lynley McAlpine was growing up in the small Saskatchewan town of Aylesbury, she never imagined her love of history would make her an international media star.

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McAlpine, who is a Roman art expert, has been working since 2018 on finding out more about an ancient bust, or portrait, bought for $34.99 at a Goodwill store in Austin, Texas.

The rare find is now finally on display in an exhibit curated by McAlpine at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) in San Antonio, Texas, where she is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow. And McAlpine’s phone has been running hot ever since.

“I knew that people would be fascinated by the story when it came out, but I hadn’t anticipated just how much it would blow up! In the last few days I have spent hours on the phone being interviewed by the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and more than a dozen other local, national, and international news organizations. That’s very different from my normal work, which mostly involves sitting at my desk reading and writing,” McAlpine said in an email interview with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

McAlpine was first invited to view the thrift store bargain in 2018 along with other Roman art experts by Laura Young, the art collector who discovered it.

The bust — produced in Rome sometime between late 1st century BC to the early 1st century AD — was once housed in a German museum decades ago, after being acquired by the Bavarian king Ludwig I, who displayed it in a full-scale replica of a home in Pompeii (called the Pompejanum) in Aschaffenburg, Germany.

The Pompejanum stood for more than a century before it was heavily bombed by Allied fighters during Second World War. It is not known how the bust ended up in Texas. The Bavarian government confirmed the authenticity of the find, but told Young she couldn’t sell it.

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“In January 2019, Laura Young asked me and a colleague from SAMA if we would like to come and see it again to consider displaying it at SAMA once her agreement with the German government had been completed. We did want to display it, but it was a long process, made even longer by COVID, and it only finally arrived at SAMA last month,” McAlpine said.

McAlpine has a Ph.D. in Roman art and archeology from the University of Michigan and worked on researching the portrait’s history, both in ancient Rome and in 19th and 20th centuries Germany. She is also the curator for the exhibition displaying the bust at SAMA.

“It has definitely been a lot of fun to work on. My main work at SAMA is provenance research, which is all about trying to uncover the modern histories of artworks in the museum and making sure nothing was stolen or looted in the past,” she said.

“It’s fascinating work and I’ve found lots of interesting things, but I can honestly say that nothing I’ve learned about SAMA’s collection so far is as wild as this royal German art collection to WWII looting to Goodwill story!”

McAlpine attended Craik School in Saskatchewan, where history “was always my favourite subject”, and then majored in Classical Studies (ancient Greece and Rome) at Western University in London, Ontario.

“I had a lot of wonderful teachers and mentors in Canada. I usually try to go back to Saskatchewan a couple of times a year, but because of COVID I haven’t been there since 2019. I have plans to get home this coming August, though. Fingers crossed,” McAlpine said.

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“I definitely don’t miss the winters, but to be honest, south Texas summers are just as miserable for me. It’s 39 degrees Celsius here today, and it’s only the beginning of May! I’m looking forward to going north for part of the summer,” she said on Saturday.

The discovery was just as exciting for Young, who is often on the hunt for rare art pieces and who took the 52 lb marble bust outside for a closer look under some natural light, she told the New York Times.

“He had chips to the base. He had clear repairs. He looks old. I’ve been to museums. I’ve seen Roman portrait heads before,” Young said.

Young strapped the bust, which still had a yellow price tag on its cheek, into the front seat of her car and took it home, where she decided to follow her hunch and contacted the experts.

The bust will be displayed at the San Antonio Museum of Art until May 2023, after which it will be returned to Germany.

with files from the National Post and the New York Times

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