In 1933, Iris Cornelia Love was born in New York to Cornelius Love and Audrey Josephthal, and was a maternal great-great-granddaughter of Meyer Guggenheim. From an early age, she was interested in archaeology and art history, encouraged experts who frequented her parents' home, such as Director of the Metropolitan Museum of ArtJames Rorimer and archaeologist Gisela Richter. Love completed her Bachelor of Arts at Smith College, which included a year abroad at the University of Florence. During the pursuit of her bachelor's thesis in Italy, she compared Etruscan warrior figures at the National Archaeological Museum, Florence with those at the Met in New York and concluded the latter was housing fakes. Out of respect for her connections in New York, she initially hesitated to publish her substantiations, and decided to warn them when she was ready to release the findings in 1960. The museum retaliated by announcing the forgeries to The New York Times, without acknowledging her work. Love never finished the beginnings of her doctorate at New York University, instead working on an excavation on the island of Samothrace in the Aegean Sea from 1957 to 1965. She later became assistant professor at C.W. Post Long Island University.
Iris Cornelia Love is perhaps best known for her archaeological work in Knidos, which began when she traveled there with Turkish archaeologist Aşkıdil Akarca and continued after raising funds from Long Island University for further excavation on an annual basis. In 1969, her team discovered a foundation that Love thought was the remains of the Temple of Aphrodite, confirming the instinct with inscriptions found the following year. The discovery attracted international media attention when it was presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, and attracted many famous guests to the excavation site, including Mick and Bianca Jagger. This fanfare called Love's interpretation into question, with critics accusing her of converting the excavation into an exclusive holiday spot. The year 1970 also found Love involved in another controversial research discussion. She believed she had found the original head of Aphrodite by the artist Praxiteles in the depots of the British Museum, which would have been one of the most spectacular discoveries in the history of ancient art. Greco-Roman Curator Bernard Ashmole vehemently contested this interpretation, stirring a dispute in the press. With this rebuke, Love concentrated on the search for the statue in continued excavations, with numerous deep search trenches created that still shape the area of ancient Knidos. The Turkish government revoked her research license for Knidos and Love began several new research projects, including in Ancona and the Gulf of Naples, where she primarily searched for other Aphrodite shrines. She subsequently retired from archeology, living between Greece, Italy, and New York where she lived for many years with tabloid journalist Liz Smith and devoted herself to breeding dachshunds, for which she won several prizes. Iris Cornelia Love died on April 17, 2020 at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan of COVID-19.
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