The American art museum:

  The competition between the Metropolitan Museum and the Oriental Institute for permanent possession of the Wimborne Collection seemed to hinge on the question of whether the Assyrian sculptures were works of art or scientific research material.

  Both museums presented their view of the significance of the reliefs to Rockefeller,  who carefully investigated their claims and decided in favor of the Metropolitan.

  The presentation of ancient Assyria and the idea of the ancient Orient in a twentieth-century American museum is then seen in the three successive Assyrian installations at the Metropolitan. In the first installation, the Assyrian colossi were juxtaposed with Classical statuary, emphasizing the perceived art-historical relationship between the two types of art.

  The two subsequent installations, however, each presented the Assyrian reliefs in their own room, completely separate from other styles of art, and each of these rooms was designed with the goal of evoking the original Assyrian palatial context of the sculptures. The notion of Assyria as a link in the chain of art was thereby replaced by the assertion that Assyria was a discrete culture.