This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: 281 objects, dating from Stone Age 6000 B.C. to 20th-century Ottoman work, included sculpture, bronzes, pottery, jewelry, glass, textiles, and weapons (282 entries were in the catalogue--the famous marble portrait head of Alexander the Great from Pergamon did not come). After years of negotiations with the Turkish government, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service arranged this exhibition as a survey of Turkish history. The artifacts reflected conquerors representing such cultures as the Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, succeeded by the Christian empire of Constantine, followed by the Seldjuk and the Ottoman Turks. Many of the loans were from the Topkapi Museum.

Attendance: 71,925

Catalog: Art Treasures of Turkey, with essays by Machteld Mellink, Rodney Young, Paul Underwood, and Richard Ettinghausen. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1966.

Other Venues: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
University Museum, Philadelphia
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Seattle Art Museum
M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco
Milwaukee Art Center
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York