Susanne Ebbinghaus is George MA Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art at the Harvard Art Museum/Arthur M. Sackler Museums. Her research focuses on cultural exchanges between Greece and the Near East in the first millennium BCE. Current projects include a study of rhyta and other animal-shaped vessels in the Achaemenid Persian empire and beyond, and an investigation of the Near Eastern impact on the art and society of the Greek island of Samos in the early Archaic period. The latter was supported by a fellowship of the Gerda Henkel Foundation in 2003/04. Other interests include ancient feasting and gift exchange, visual narratives and representations of foreigners, metalworking techniques and sculptural polychromy.