In brief
Nine artefacts from the ancient city of Apollonia Pontica will debut in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the exhibition "Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece." Seven items come from Sozopol’s municipal museum and two from Burgas’s regional heritage collection, including a Cybele relief and the nation’s oldest marble kouros. The show, which runs from December 20, 2026 to April 11, 2027, assembles more than 180 works from major museums worldwide.
Nine archaeological artefacts from ancient Apollonia Pontica – a city on the modern Bulgarian coast – will be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, according to a report by BTA on November 13, 2026, after the exhibition’s opening date of December 20, 2026.
The MET’s new show, titled Across Wine-Dark Seas: Art and Identity beyond Ancient Greece, will run until April 11, 2027 and will bring together more than 180 works from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, western Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Sardinia and the Apennine Peninsula.
Of the nine items, seven belong to the Municipal Cultural Institute Museum Centre in Sozopol, while two are part of the collection of the Regional History Museum in Burgas.
Burgas is sending two emblematic stone sculptures: a relief depicting the goddess Cybele, dating from the first half of the 5th century BC and discovered in the waters of Sozopol Harbour, and a kouros statue of a young man, a marble figure from the 6th to the early 5th century BC found on Atia Peninsula, which is the oldest marble statue in Bulgarian museums.
"The Black Sea is represented in the exhibition exclusively through Apollonia Pontica, with artefacts from the collections of the museums in Burgas and Sozopol," said Sozopol Museum Director Dimitar Nedev.
Nedel stated that this placement is a significant recognition of the region’s archaeological heritage and of the ancient city’s role in cultural contacts across the Greek world and the western Black Sea coast.
The two Burgas artefacts were dispatched to New York on November 12. The Regional History Museum team said preparations for their transport required three days: a specialist team packed the stone sculptures, placed them in specially designed transport crates, and prepared ramps for loading them onto a truck.
The seven Sozopol pieces, which include ceramic vessels associated with the religious practices of ancient Apollonians, are yet to be shipped to the United States.
