The British Museum’s exhibition “Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art” opens in March with rare loans and treasures from the museum’s own collection, including six items from its controversial Parthenon marbles collection.

The exhibition’s curator Ian Jenkins states that Greeks had a tendency towards nudity in their statues that isn’t true in any other civilization as the Egyptians, Persians and Assyrians found it shameful. Mr. Jenkins states that nudity to Greeks “was the mark of a hero”.

Other cultures saw nudity as unappealing, usually showing victims rather than heroes, but the 150 Greek items on display are a celebration of the naked body. The exhibition also includes the Belevedere Torso on loan from the Vatican Museum that will be displayed at the BM alongside Michelangelo’s drawing of Adam for the Sistine Chapel to show how the torso influenced Michelangelo.

The display also includes the Apoxyomenos statue found off the coast of Croatia in 1999, shown in Britain after years of conservation work. There is also a small bronze sculpture, just three inches tall, depicting a man in the state of arousal that had been gathering dust in the BM archive but was discovered to be the earliest depiction of Ajax, hero of the Trojan War.

“Everyone knows the Greek body,” says BM Director Neil Macgregor, adding though that the point of “Defining Beauty” is to show that it ” isn’t just an artistic tradition, but also connected to a set of ideas and ideals.”