On Friday 18 November 2011 Christian and Gina Levett attended a gala dinner at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum to honour its fellows and benefactors and to preview the new Egyptian galleries, which opened to the public on 26 November.

The dinner was hosted by Ashmolean Director Christopher Brown, in the presence of the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten, culminating with an excellent after-dinner speech by Jon Snow.

Christian Levett has been a major supporter of the project, and was honoured on the occasion of the dinner with an Ashmolean Fellowship by Lord Patton, which recognises his outstanding contribution to the study of the ancient world.

The Christian Levett Family Gallery is at the heart of the newly configured Egyptian galleries and includes the splendid Shrine of Taharqa from the temple at Kawa – the only complete freestanding pharaonic building in Britain.

Musée D’Art Classique De Mougins has been awarded Museum Opening of the Year by Apollo, the prestigious art and antiques magazine. We are honoured by this nomination and thank Apollo for this award. An article detailing this appears on pages 58-60 in the December edition of the magazine in an excellent article written by Sir John Boardman, Emeritus Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology & Art at the University of Oxford.

The Museum faced the stiff competition of four other short-listed museums: The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire; Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and later South Asia, the Metropolitan Museum of art, New York; The Holburne Museum, Bath; and The Museum of New and Old Art, Hobart, Tasmania. In turn, it is fitting to offer our congratulations to these fine establishments on their excellent achievements.

The volume is a catalogue of the collection of Christian Levett, proprietor of the Mougins Museum of Classical Art, and is edited by Dr Mark Merrony. It contains 16 chapters written by specialists and these deal thematically with different aspects of the collection and relate the history of Mougins and the broader Graeco-Roman traditions of the region.

Many people enjoy meeting famous people and I am one of them. So I was absolutely delighted when Marc Quinn and his family walked into the Museum this morning with the proprietor of the Museum, Christian Levett. We are all great admirers of the sculpture of Marc Quinn so this was a special treat for our staff. Below is a short extract from the Museum catalogue entitled 'Classical Modern Art' by Dalya Alberge. We have two works by Marc Quinn and these are described below. Bienvenue Marc!

Mark Merrony

Marc Quinn (born 1964)

Mougins has two sculptures by Marc Quinn, perhaps best known for filling a mould of his head with his own blood. He has long been interested in ancient Greek art. When he too was commissioned to fill the Trafalgar Square plinth, he created a modern-day Venus de Milo, a reinterpretation of the classical depictions of an idealised whole – a marble depiction of a woman whose congenital disorder left her without arms and shortened legs. His sculptured portrait, made of gold, of the supermodel Kate Moss has been compared to a modern-day Aphrodite, reminding us that her image has become as iconic as the goddesses of the ancient world.

In other sculptures, he has explored the theme of dependency, portraying actual individuals who keep illness at bay with drugs. He cast them in wax mixed with their relevant medicines. At Mougins, his bust of Bill Waltier (Blind from Birth), 2005 depicts a person born blind, with empty, blank eyes yet suggesting seeing thus configured (Fig 55). Nicholas Grogan – Insulin (Diabetes), 2005, is made of wax and insulin. These images have been likened to the preserved bodies recovered from Pompeii.

In the last feature about the oil painting by Marie Tissot readers would have noticed the presence of Minerva. For the uninitiated, Minerva: The International Review of Ancient Art and Archaeology, is owned by the Proprietor of Mougins Museum of Classical Art but it is still published in London. Minerva typically features news stories about ancient art and archaeology and features on the same topics, such as Museum exhibitions and exciting discoveries, excavations, and surveys. The magazine has a strong tradition of academics and travel writers who have written in an engaging and accessible manner to give Minerva a broader appeal. This is very much the hallmark of the magazine, as is the quality of its production.

Many may have seen the recent television advertising campaign and this is set to continue. The TV advert is of the highest quality and depicts a series of animations springing from the pages of the magazine – from an ancient warrior to Queen Nefertiti. It is also narrated by Tony Robinson from the Time Team, perhaps best know for playing Baldrick in Black Adder opposite Rowan Atkinson. The net result of the quality of the magazine and the marketing initiatives are its rising popularity as reflected in distribution and subscription levels. So this is extremely good news in a difficult economic phase for the international community.

On behalf of the London team and myself I would like to welcome any of our numerous international contributors to submit any article that they think would be appropriate for publication. We of course would also be pleased to endorse any new contributors. In the next few issues there are some especially interesting and exciting articles about ancient sites and civilisations; and some excellent Museum exhibitions and interviews with famous people who have a passion for archaeology and history. For further details please feel free to view our contact details below. The London team would be pleased to hear from you. All new subscribers are very welcome to share in our passion. New advertisers can benefit from competitive rates and are strongly urged to participate in a truly excellent product.

Visitors to the Museum are commenting on a daily basis about the stunning Roman sculpture that greets them as they enter the ground floor People and Personalities gallery. Two of the most conspicuous marbles are the statues of emperor and empress Hadrian and Domitia. Both of these are over life-size and visually imposing for this reason in addition to their aesthetic beauty.

People who visit often do not immediately realise that this is a room not just with an incredible interior view, but also with the most extraordinary exterior vista. On the north terrace are two over life-size cast iron statues by Antony Gormley called Reflection. They face each other in a mirror image and allude to the Greek mythical figure Narcissus. Gormley is of course famous for his Angel of the North which dominates the skyline on a hill in Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, England. It is ironic that two of his other sculptures now dominate a hill in the South of France. Perhaps it would be appropriate to refer to them now as ‘The Narcissus of the South’.

According to the Greek myth Narcissus was punished by the gods for rejecting the love of Echo and they made him fall in love with his own reflection. So, in Mougins he now stands fixated west-east looking at himself. This rigid perspective denies him another glorious view to the north. Many visitors to the Vieux Village are bowled over by the belle vue north of the village. The most prominent hills to the fore are the Pre-Alps. These include Le Haut-Montet (1335 metres) and Puy de Tourettes (1267m). To put these into some kind of perspective, the highest mountain in the UK is Ben Nevis (1344m). Further to the north, and clearly visible from Mougins, is Le Cheiron (1777m), and to the north-east are the Alps: La Cougourde (2921m), Gelas (3143m), the sinister sounding Maledie (3059), and Mount Clapier (3045m) – all clearly visible from the Museum terrace.

Any visitors to Mougins are of course most welcome to visit the Museum. Our admission rates are competitive for a private museum and have recently been adjusted to make a visit even more desirable. A visit to ‘The Room with a View’ is a must and I would be delighted to talk with anyone on the subject of our magnificent collection inside the Museum and also our ‘Narcissus of the South’ and what the Canadian group Arcade Fire would describe as ‘Mountains Beyond Mountains’!

Mark Merrony