“The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece,” which opened at the Portland Art Museum earlier this month, showcases 130 objects from the holdings of the British Museum that depict the human figure.

“Over two thousand years, the Greeks experimented with representing the human body in works that range from abstract simplicity to complete realism,” says the exhibition catalogue. “The ancient Greeks put mankind at the center of their universe. In philosophy, drama, poetry, history, art and architecture, they shaped the modern idea of what it is to be human. Even their gods were conceived as larger-than-life human beings who, except for their immortality, shared all our strengths and weaknesses of character. As Protagoras, the fifth-century BC philosopher famously said, ‘Man is the measure.'”

Of particular note regarding this exhibition is the first visit of the Discobolus, a seminal depiction of the male athlete and an icon of Greek culture as a whole, to the United States. Curiously, the catalogue describes the work in ungenerous terms. “[Its] limbs and torso are artificially arranged to correspond with Greek ideas of balance and rhythm in a composition that is pleasing from one viewpoint only. Made in the second century AD, this marble statue is Roman and copies a lost bronze original made by the Greek sculptor Myron in the middle of the fifth century BC. Other marble copies survive, and these have been variously restored. The head of this figure looks forward, when it should look back.”

But it isn’t for nothing that the first letters of “artifice” are “art,” and as for the head, if it’s not faithful to the original, it’s no insult to it either. In any case, many Americans will be looking forward to seeing it for the first time on this side of the Atlantic.

“The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece” runs through January 6, 2013 at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, Oregon, 503-226-2811, portlandartmuseum.org.

Franklin Einspruch is the art critic for The New York Sun. He blogs at Artblog.net.