Special Exhibition Tour: The Etruscans

The Etruscans opens at The San Antonio Museum of Art on October 31, 2026, and runs through March 14, 2027, in the Cowden Gallery. It's a look at the culture that flourished in ancient Etruria—the region between the Arno and Tiber Rivers in what is now Italy—from the 9th to the 2nd century BC. The exhibition is billed as the most comprehensive presentation of Etruscan culture in the United States in recent decades, and the numbers back that up: around 200 objects lent by museums across Italy, Europe, the US, and Canada. Many of them are being shown in the US for the first time.

Among those loans are masterpieces from the Vatican's Gregorian Etruscan Museum, the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, and the Civic Museums of Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza. The display covers a wide range of ground—craft production, contacts with other Mediterranean cultures, language, religious rituals, and burial practices. It also looks at the lives of Etruscan women and the profound influence the Etruscans had on ancient Rome. If you've ever wondered about the people who were there before the Roman Empire took over the peninsula, this is where you'll find them.

The exhibition was organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the San Antonio Museum of Art, with support from The Brown Foundation and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di San Francisco. It follows a presentation at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, so it's making its way across the country. You'll find it in the Cowden Gallery at SAMA, 200 West Jones Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78215, from October 31 through March 14.