James Romano, Curator Of Egyptian Art at Brooklyn Museum
Hyfler/Rosner
By GRACE GLUECK NYTimes
James F. Romano, a longtime curator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art who
recently finished the reinstallation of the museum's famed Egyptian
collection, died on Monday morning in Lynbrook, N.Y., when the car he was
driving veered off the road and hit a metal fence. He was 56 and lived in
the nearby town of East Rockaway.
He was alone in the car, the Nassau County Police Department said.
Mr. Romano, a scholar in the field of Egyptology, joined the museum's
department of Egyptian, classical and Middle Eastern art in 1976 and was
appointed curator in 1988. Earlier this year, he completed the second and
final stage of the reinstallation, an ambitious undertaking that was more
than a decade in the planning. (The first stage opened in 1993.)
Mr. Romano was a specialist in the sculpture, reliefs and minor phases of
Egyptian art of the 18th dynasty as well as of the Old Kingdom.
One of Mr. Romano's most recent publications was "In the Fullness of Time:
Masterpieces of Egyptian Art from American Collections" (2002), a catalog
accompanying a show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Willamette University in
Salem, Ore. He was also the author or co-author of articles in scholarly
journals.
Richard A. Fazzini, chairman of Mr. Romano's department at the museum, said
that Mr. Romano did the first really detailed study of images of a deity
known as Bes - an important part of religious iconography in Pharaonic
Egypt - tracing how those images changed over time.
James Frank Romano was born on April 12, 1947, in Far Rockaway, Queens, and
grew up in nearby Hewlett. He graduated from State University of New York at
Binghamton in 1969 and received M.A. and Ph.D degrees in ancient Near
Eastern and Egyptian art and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at
New York University.
Mr. Romano is survived by his wife, Diana Craig Patch, an assistant curator
in the department of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum; a daughter,
Julia; and a son from a previous marriage, Michael James Romano White of
Washington.