Acropolis Museum

We approach the Acropolis Museum in a unique way.  We prep the students by talking about the museum as an example of the theme of the memorialization of history, and as an argument to the world.  We ask them to look for the ways the argument is being made with space, with signage, with attributions, with what is on display and what is not.  All museums of course are making arguments, whether deliberate or unconscious, about the country or city's identity, what is important about art, what art is important, etc, but the Acropolis Museum provides a particularly strong and deliberate argument that makes the point beautifully.  We hope it will help the students learn how to approach odd museums with some way to understand them, and famous museums with a critical eye.  I love odd museums -- I fondly remember the Postal Museum in Paris, the Mutter Museum of medical oddities in Philadelphia, the Maritime Museum in Jacksonville -- and this kind of approach helps me to find a way to understand and appreciate them.  Many of our students have rarely if ever been to a museum and have never been talked to about how to view a museum, so this is often a fascinating discussion.

The Acropolis Museum is perhaps the best example I've ever seen of a museum that is making an argument.  The argument is "Give us back the Parthenon sculptures!" and has several different lines of argument:  the centrality of context, the ability to display them well, and the ability to care for the finds both from environmental and human threats.

Context:  The museum is built very deliberately within sight of the Acropolis.  The architecture participates in the argument about context.  The entrance has glass floors to highlight the excavations underneath ("we didn't destroy anything to build this museum; we preserve our heritage").  There is a very deliberate path one is supposed to take through the museum (with many signs telling you where you are and where you go next).  The path takes you up a sloped walkway through the finds from the archaic period, and then the 5th century sculpture from the Acropolis as a whole, up to the Parthenon sculptures at the very top with floor-to-ceiling views outside at the city, and then down through the smaller buildings, to the Caryatids at the center, and finally out through 5th century smaller finds.  The archaic and 5th century finds are on a sloped walkway, representing the slopes of the acropolis. The Parthenon sculptures are not only at the top, within site of the actual Parthenon (floor-to-ceiling windows!), but also in a room that is designed to subtly mimic the structure of the Parthenon with 16 columns lengthwise, the frieze, pediments and metopes oriented the way they are on the Parthenon.

Context is highlighted in a different way:  The top floor is the scale of the actual Parthenon with 16 columns length-wise, the frieze going all around, and the metopes above on the columns.

The full effect:  pediment statues, frieze, columns, and metopes.

 Everything screams "this museum and these finds can ONLY be here, in Athens, within sight of the actual site where they were found!"

In each installation, it is made clear what is actually still there, what exists but is in another museum (and which one), and what is simply gone.  The missing parts are missing so you can see how much or how little is left, and the current locations of any existing but missing parts are noted -- so we see exactly which museums to contact to demand the marbles back.

What is there. 

What is not there, but is somewhere else.

What is gone but which we have a record of, usually a traveler's sketch (in the bottom right hand corner) from the 18th or 19th century

What is simply gone (the blank squares -- each square once had something).

The understated labels.  Other museums are clearly identified (Louvre, Copenhagen) but British Museum is simply "BM."

Context is highlighted with floor-to-ceiling windows of the view of the Acropolis and surrounding area.

This effect of the missing marbles and the potency of the argument is most noticeable with the Caryatids.  There were 6, and 5 are on display.  The sixth is in the British Museum ("AND WE WANT IT BACK" the display screams).

Caryatids, with a space for the missing one that is in the BM. This display is in the exact center of the museum, and visible on the third floor and also from the second floor as you walk down towards the exit... one of the last things you see as you leave:  the caryatids and the waiting space.

The space has been primed and is waiting for the BM's kori.

 There is another argument being made that Greece can now take care of its finds, with many labels discussing the cutting edge technology and methodology being used to clean and restore the existing marbles:  "We know we didn't care for them during the pollution of the 1990s, but we know now!" At the doors are the only metal detectors I've seen in central Athens -- "We can protect them from terrorists, too!"

"We can care for them!"  The actual laser cleaning is no longer happening, but a video and the the explanation is highlighted in a bright red sign.