By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

One Mobile artist is an unknown key to the Gulf Coast Exploreum’s latest blockbuster exhibit, but its unlikely you’ll notice him particularly. His work you can’t escape.

When the downtown museum learned it would acquire its current showpiece focusing on the Roman city of Pompeii, they knew they had to contact Tracy Duarte. Duarte did work for the Exploreum’s Dead Sea Scrolls and mummy exhibits and had the expertise needed for the job.

In fact, his work is front and center. Visitors to the museum confront a multi-story Roman-style city gate through which they pass to enter the hall. The work is all Duarte’s. “That took me about 150 hours of carving to get that one done,” Duarte said. “I went to my studio in Tennessee to do part of it, too.”

“The rocks are made of high density foam,” he explained. “There’s crown molding on the top. The pillars are fiberglass so they were really heavy.”

Duarte designed the gateway himself as well as other components of the exhibit. “Some areas they were vague, some more specific,” he said when asked if the museum asked for particular items. He used reference guides and other books on the ancient city buried beneath the ash of Mt. Vesuvius on Aug. 24, 79 AD. Color schemes in the exhibit hall are matched to examples taken from the excavated buildings.

And the weathering on the structures? “I like to walk around downtown taking pictures of buildings, stone, see how it weathers,” Duarte said. “That’s the best reference tool you could have.”

The work is in progress yet. “We’re still going around tweaking some things,” he explained. “there are signs, other things we’re finding could be better as the exhibit opens up and more people go through. We’re trying to give it a good flow.”

Also included in Duarte’s tasks are the signs and banners involved in February’s visit from the Castra Romana, a group of Roman army re-enactors who will camp out across Royal Street from the museum. Duarte has painted signs in Mobile for two decades. Check out this issue’s Art Gallery for more information on the visiting military group.

The living quasi-Romans pale in impact, though, to the remains of the actual Roman citizens in the museum at the foot of Government Street. The much-ballyhooed plaster casts of Vesuvius’ victims are used as the crowning touch to a moving exhibit.

However, visitors aren’t merely trotted before the dead in short order. The museum, in the first exhibit they have curated from beginning to end, introduces guests to a way of life in Pompeii that sounds familiar enough to modern ears.

Like contemporary Italians, and Mobilians, Pompeiians loved their food. So much, in fact that the town of roughly 20,000 inhabitants boasted around 300 restaurants, indicative of a fairly cosmopolitan lifestyle. Not only are preparation techniques on display, but actual carbonized examples of foodstuffs left behind in the clamor to flee the oncoming ash and heat are present as well.

Examples of the panoply of Roman religiosity are represented with characterized deities and their ubiquitous presence in day-to-day life, also not unlike current life in the Azalea City.

To Artifice, the most emotional moments were canine in origin. A display of gravesite artifacts contained tiny sculptures, beloved reminders to the interred of the most dear parts of their lives. Lining one case were tiny, fragile representations of dogs bent in play, legs splayed in front and heads cocked mischievously to the side. It was obvious these had been favorite companions for some portion of someone’s life. What were their names? What memories, fond and sad, were stirred when they clutched these keepsakes?

In the room containing the aforementioned plaster casts, one victim wasn’t human at all but seemed as tragic as any there. A dog twisted in death throes at the end of its chain was left to die before the approaching maelstrom. The figure proves as emotive now as the first time this writer viewed it in the pages of book three decades ago.

The casts and other artifacts, including a portion of an actual garden fresco from a villa wall, were attended by Giuseppe Zolfo, a 26-year veteran of conservation work in Pompeii. Zolfo emphasized the rarity of such displays outside the ancient city. “This should be a special treat for visitors in Mobile,” he said.

For Tracy Duarte, the most special treat will be getting a chance to rest from the workload. “I’ve put about 1200 hours into this so far,” he said. “I started back on November 17 and have done about six months worth of work in two months’ time.”

“It’s taken a lot of stamina,” Duarte added, “but it’s been worth it. These are good people to work for.”

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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