Museology

We have had a lot of fun this summer thinking about how to visit museums. One of the tools we were trying to teach the students is about analyzing museums... it is how to get the upper hand when you don't understand a museum.  Why are you here and what should you be looking at?

At the Acropolis Museum, we do an activity where we tell the students that this museum is making an argument, and as they are going through it, they should figure out what argument it is making, and how it is making that argument.  I love this example, because it is so clearly making the argument "Give us back the Parthenon Sculptures (and all the other bits of the Parthenon that are scattered across Europe)!"  The building itself is state-of-the-art, with metal detectors as you enter, electronic ticketing, many, many guards, restrictions on photography, many excellent facilities like bathrooms and a cafe, a reading room, and educational spaces, a coat room, and is fully climate-controlled with a central system -- very efficient and professional.

Very clear pathway through the museum galleries.

The museum is organized very deliberately, with a clear pathway through, and each set of decisions making a different piece of the argument.  You enter and walk up a sloped walkway, with objects found on the slopes of the Acropolis in cases along the walls.  They are organized topographically, and I think the cases each reflect a different find-site organized in the order you'd encounter them if you were winding your way around the acropolis up its slopes.  This emphasizes the importance of place -- this museum is adjacent to the Acropolis itself and organized (partially) to reflect the organization of the actual Acropolis. Then you reach the first level, which shifts organizing principle (and argument) and is dedicated to the Archaic period.  There are many korai and other impressive statues.  This shift to a chronological organizing principle is VERY selective, including only two periods, the Archaic and (later) the 5th century, with a little on the Roman period, but utterly ignoring everything else, including the Frankish, Byzantine, and modern periods. This museum is devoted to the Parthenon as the apex of ancient Greek civilization -- the glory that was Greece.  In addition to the chronological organization, there is a focus on the ancient pigments -- the Greek temples were not pure white, but garishly painted.  There are statues with traces of paint, examples of minerals used to make the pigments, discussion of conservation techniques, and techniques to glean information about the original colors of the statues.  This scientific/conservationist argument is made here:  we can conserve and add to knowledge through our expertise and scientific focus.

Then there is the Parthenon galleries -- a shift back to the topographical. This gallery is on top, with floor to ceiling windows including a direct view of the Acropolis itself, along with views all around of Athens.  And the gallery is set up to mirror the architecture of the Acropolis:  a walled central area, surrounded by round (steel) columns, with each piece of the metopes and the friezes in their correct spot, all oriented towards the actual temple that you can see out the window.

Steel columns and cella wall in the Acropolis Museum

This is the Acropolis from the Parthenon galleries in the acropolis Museum.

Each piece is  the actual pieces (again... see, we can take care of these treasures and keep them inside) or a very bad plaster cast (the originals SHOULD be here; plaster casts are not an acceptable substitute), or a sketch of what has since been destroyed, or an empty spot where we have no information  (see how rigorously evidence-based we are?).  Where there is an existing piece, whether actual piece or cast, there is an indication of where the original is held:  BM (British Museum) Acr (Acropolis Museum) Vatican, Louvre, etc.

This is a cast as the original is indicated as being in the British Museum.

Acr on the left, BM on the right

There is a movie that teaches visitors how a temple is organized, what the sculptural designs are of each side, and its later history (including a line about the theft of the Elgin marbles).

On the way down, you pass through the 5th century, and stop at the Caryatids to see not only the original pieces up close, but also how they have been so carefully cleaned.  Phil noticed that the one that is in the British Museum is not represented by a plaster cast, possibly because it is in much better physical shape, having been in the BM all these years instead of being eaten away by the toxic air during the years of the nephos (Athenian smog).

Every detail makes one of three arguments:  location matters, Greece is up to the challenge of caring for these treasures, and everything belongs together. There is a tiny amount of Roman artifacts on display,  but just about everything that is not central to the time period was removed and either relocated (the Christian remains are in the Byzantine and Christian Museum) or destroyed (the mosque and Frankish tower, buildings).  It is a very selective focus.

Thinking about this experience, which makes such a great example for the students, I was awake to the idea of museums as arguments this whole trip. I visited two war museums and one exhibit on war, and noticed how challenging it is to represent war in a country with  as complicated a history as Greece has. In the War Museum in Athens, which was built during the Junta (1977-1974), a time when a military coup installed a government.  I stood in an archway between two rooms and announced to the students "this archway must be the Roman period, because we go from ancient Greece to Byzantium."  There was nothing on the Roman period at all, though there was plenty of war during that time (many of the major battles of the Late Republic were fought in Greece--Pharsalus, Philippoi, Actium--and Greek forces were involved).  There were rooms on the war of 1940-41, and the Asia Minor campaign of 1921-22, but little about the Axis occupation of Greece or the aftermath of the 1922 "catastrophe" as it is called. It is hard to be patriotic and historical in a country with a complex history including multiple foreign occupations.  Are you presenting the history of Greece (the land) or of Greek successes (which don't include the occupations or any successes that happened during foreign rule)?  Is your purpose nationalistic or historical?

 The War Museum in Nafplion, similarly tried to strike that balance,  and I also noticed a very selective chronology. It was built in 1988 through the directive of the Army Cadet School, and focuses on 1821-present because that is the most important period for Nafplion which played an outsized role in Greek history at this time.  This one had a section that focused on cartoons during the war, all of which presented Greece as heroic.

The Italians got caught by the Greek resistance to their occupation while the Germans marched on.

The evocation of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans in the Greek resistance, written in English.

However, in a room outside the actual museum was a temporary exhibition on the Venetians, who occupied Nafplion twice, from 1212-1289 and 1686-1715.  This was part of the war museum, but was temporary and was outside.

Finally, Phil and I went to the Pireas Museum, which, along with all of the ancient material found in and around the harbor town, had a new exhibition called "Antithesis" which examined the ancient and modern Pireas in light of Marxist interest in class struggle.  Everything  was reinterpreted along those lines.

One of the plaques.  If we had any question about the bias of the curator, this cleared it up!

Liberation of people from the moral bonds of the city led to a kind of flamboyant showing-off of human vanity...they are talking about the  4th  century BCE.