In brief
Two stone sculptures from Apollonia Pontica – a relief of the goddess Cybele and a 6th‑century BP kouros – were shipped to New York on November 12 as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition “Across Wine‑Dark Seas.” The show opens December 20, 2026, and will display nine Apollonian items among more than 180 works from the wider Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea region.
On November 12 the Regional History Museum in Burgas confirmed that a Cybele relief and a 6th‑century‑old marble kouros were shipped to New York as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming “Across Wine‑Dark Seas” exhibition.
The shipment followed a three‑day preparation that involved a specialist team packing the stone sculptures into custom crates and setting up ramps for the truck, the museum said.
Seven additional artefacts will come from the Municipal Cultural Institute Museum Centre in Sozopol, the site’s director Dimitar Nedev told the Bulgarian news outlet BTA. The remaining items are ceramic vessels linked to ancient religious practices.
“The Black Sea is represented in the exhibition exclusively through Apollonia Pontica, with artefacts from the collections of the museums in Burgas and Sozopol,” Nedev said.
“The two artefacts from Burgas were dispatched to New York on November 12, the Regional History Museum team said.”
In the larger context, “Across Wine‑Dark Seas” will open on December 20, 2026, and run until April 11, 2027. It will assemble more than 180 works from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, western Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Sardinia and the Apennine Peninsula, including pieces from the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, among others.
According to BTA, the exhibition highlights the ancient city’s cultural role in Greek‑Black Sea contacts and will feature the oldest marble statue in Bulgarian museums – the kouros found on Atia Peninsula.
