A major exhibition, entitled “The Golden Legend” will be held at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

The exhibition, organized by the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo and the Japanese newspaper “The Tokyo Shinbun”, deals with the history and distribution of gold in ancient times and focuses on the myth of the Golden Fleece and its “abduction” from Jason and the Argonauts, a myth expressing the early search of gold in the Black Sea region.

The exhibition opens on October 16, hosting, among others, 147 ancient Greek artifacts from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.

The items on exhibit will consist of either articles made of gold or artworks in some way related to gold. Precious gold artifacts from the Mediterranean area’s ancient civilizations will be on loan from a multitude of European sources, including the Vatican Museums, the National Etruscan Museum in Rome (Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia), the National Archaeological Museum in Florence (Firenze, Museo Archeologico Nazionale), and the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria. Also on display will be a host of paintings thematically connected to gold, on loan from the permanent collections of major European art museums.