There’s a first time for everything. After spending nearly 300 years as part of a British aristocrat’s estate, an ancient Roman sculpture is making its way to a gallery in Chicago. Named “The Halsted Athena,” the 74.5-inch marble statue travels from the North Yorkshire home of William Weddell, an English politician who acquired it during a trip to Rome in the mid–1700s. Even then, its allure came from its layered history. While Athena’s head dates back to the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus, her body has been traced to the earlier rule of Claudius. Roman artists of the time looked to Greece for inspiration. “Even in the first century C.E., when the statue took its complete form,” says the curator Karen Manchester, “Romans were harking back to an immemorial Greece.” Now, this still-regal and mesmerizing Athena enters yet another era—ours. —Jeanne Malle