Hellenic Culture Abroad - Exhibitions
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Black Parthenon Installation
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Black Parthenon is a public art installation at Federation Square, Melbourne, by artist Konstantin (Kon) Dimopoulos. It concerns cultural appropriation, and in particular the Parthenon Marbles, calling for their return.
Black Parthenon uses various levels of scaffolding around which black perforated cloth is used as cladding to create an architectural imprint, a silhouette of the Parthenon. During the day the installation is a black funerary altarpiece that reflects a sense of loss; a void in the national psyche of countries which have had cultural icons and treasures taken from them.
At night Black Parthenon explodes into vibrant white and blue light, the Parthenon’s iconic simplicity illuminating the surrounding darkness.
Black Parthenon, is part of a larger forum and program calling for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. Leading Australian voices for the repatriation of the Marbles include ex Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser.
Black Parthenon at Federation Square (Neoskosmos.com, 23.06.2009)www.kondimopoulos.com
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"Mount Athos and the Byzantine Empire: Treasures of the Holy Mount"
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A major exhibition under the title “Mount Athos and the Byzantine Empire: Treasures of the Holy Mount” is on display at the Petit Palais in Paris from April 10 to July 5.
The exhibition was officially inaugurated by the Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis in the presence of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on April 9. Among the exhibits, there are magnificent icons, monumental paintings, original manuscripts and exquisite miniature artifacts, so that visitors will get to know Byzantine institutions and Mount Athos' artistic legacy and as the spiritual centre of Orthodox Christianity.
The exhibition features 180 exhibits most of wich are imperial gifts and they are on display for the first time outside the all-male community.
According to Ms Bakoyannis, the exhibition reflects the broad cooperation shared by Greece and France. "These treasures belong to European culture and constitute an inseparable capital of Europe's history" she added.
Paris Mayor Bernard Delanoe welcomed Greek Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Ecumenical Patriarch during the inauguration of the exhibition.
PM, Patriarch at landmark art Paris exhibition featuring Mt. Athos-Byzantium (ANA, 01.04.09)Mt Athos splendour in Paris (GreekNewsAgenda, 03.04.09)
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Athenian Democracy speaking through its inscriptions
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The archaeological exhibition “Athenian Democracy Speaking through its Inscriptions” is the inaugural event of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture Centre in Melbourne.
The exhibition, which will run until May 26, opens on 19 March in the Hellenic Museum by the president of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, Professor G. Babiniotis and the Secretary General of the Ministry of Culture Thodoris Dravillas. It is organised by the Epigraphical Museum of Athens in collaboration with the University of Athens.
Showcasing inscribed stelai (both originals and copies), clay public tokens, a klepsydra (water clock), juror’s ballots, a juror’s tablet, ostracism sherds, and photographs, the exhibition is designed to offer the general public an opportunity to become acquainted with the constitution and functioning of the first and most genuine democracy in the world – the Athenian democracy.
The Hellenic Foundation for Culture plans to present the exhibition on Athenian Democracy in other countries too. The Hellenic Foundation for Culture Centre in Melbourne is housed in the Nafsika Stamouli Hellenic Museum, formerly the Melbourne Royal Hospital.
Hellenic Foundation for Culture: Athenian Democracy in AustraliaGreekNewsAgenda: “Athenian Democracy” Travels to Melbourne (18.03.09)Exhibition on Athenian Democracy in Melbourne (phantis.com/ANA, 16.03.09)
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“Bridges” to strengthen Turkish-Greek friendship (Hürriyet, 23.02.09) |
An exhibition titled “Bridges” featuring artworks from both sides of the Aegean Sea is on show in Ankara at the State Art and Sculpture Museum until February 28.
Turkish painter Hatice Kumbaracı Gürsöz, who was awarded with Abdi İpekçi Peace Prize in 1996 and Greek painter Sophia Kalogeropoulou, have put on an exhibition aiming to create a bridge between Turkey and Greece through art.
The exhibition, which was opened in Athens before, features similar motifs painted by the two artists proving the brotherhood between Greece and Turkey.
"As a person who has lived in Turkey for years, I think this exhibition confirms the already-existing sympathy between the two nations," Greek Ambassador to Ankara Fotios J. Xydas said during the opening ceremony. Read more…
Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens
Onassis Cultural Center, New York, December 10, 2008 - May 9, 2009
“Worshipping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens” includes 155 unique archaeological artefacts, coming from Greek museums and international institutions, including the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the State Hermitage Museum in Petersburg, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Ferrara, the Vatican Museums and the State Museums of Berlin. The exhibition has three main chapters: 1. “Goddesses and Heroines”, 2. “Women and Ritual”, 3. “Women and the Cycle of Life”. In this ways it tries to present the involvement of women in everyday life – although excluded from the political process, they had the chance to define themselves not only as women but as Athenians and as Greeks through religious rituals. The exhibition is organised by Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation in collaboration with the Greek Ministry of Culture and the National Archaeological Museum and curated by Dr. Nikolaos Kaltsas (director of the National Archaeological Museum of Greece) and Dr. Alan Shapiro (W.H. Collins Vickers Professor of Archaeology at Johns Hopkins University). It will last from December 10, 2008 to May 9, 2009.
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A major exhibition at the Onassis Cultural Centre in New York attempts to reveal the public lives of women in ancient Greece.
Byzantium 330 - 1453
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 25 October 2008 - 22 March 2009
The exhibition begins with the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and concludes with the capture of the city by the Ottoman forces of Mehmed II in 1453. This will be the first major exhibition on Byzantine Art in the United Kingdom for 50 years. This epic exhibition has been made possible through a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Arts and the Benaki Museum, Athens. Read more....
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From October 2008, the Royal Academy of Arts will host a ground-breaking exhibition devoted to Byzantium. Highlighting the splendours of the Byzantine Empire, the exhibition will comprise around 300 objects including icons, detached wall paintings, micro-mosaics, ivories, enamels plus gold and silver metalwork. Some of the works have never been displayed in public before.
The Greek Book From Papyrus to Printing
Princeton University Library, 8 September - 7 December 2008
"The Greek Book From Papyrus to Printing" will focus on the Greek book as a physical object and a repository of Western civilization over three millennia. (Image: Courtesy of the Princeton University Library) The exhibtion will include important ancient papyri of Homer and the Bible, as well as other examples of ancient writing, illuminated Gospels and devotional manuscripts, manuscripts and early printed editions of classical texts, and illustrated liturgical books and other manuscripts produced for Greek communities in the Ottoman Empire. Read more... |
Some of the Princeton University Library's greatest treasures will be on display in a fall exhibition that traces the long cultural history of the Greeks.
Photography exhibition brings the streets of Athens to İstanbul (Today’s Zaman, 29.09.08)
Migration, social integration and coexistence are the main issues explored through the photographs of this exhibition, which is a project jointly developed by the British Council Greece and the Hellenic Migration Policy Institute (IMEPO). “What we would like to communicate is a general sense of how the city is transforming and becoming a new multicultural and very dynamic, creative capital,” says anthropologist Nadina Christopoulou, the project's consultant on migration issues. The exhibition features two kinds of photographs. The black-and-white photos were taken by 14 photographers from different cultures, while the color photos were taken by multicultural teams of 85 students from 10 high schools across Athens. Read more… |
Until October 30, 2008, the exhibition “City Streets”, which features snapshots from the streets of Athens, will be on display at
The Greeks: Art Treasures from the Benaki Museum
Quebec, Canadian Museum of Civilization, May 30 to September 28, 2008
The exhibition is designed to show the world that Greek culture is not limited to the classical period that produced that country's most famous artists, philosophers and warriors -- it sprang from a civilization that began many centuries previously and was not limited to the geography of the country now known as Greece but stretched into what we now call Turkey, Syria, Cyprus, Egypt and other Mediterranean areas.
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The globe-trotting exhibition The Greeks: Art Treasures from the Homer - The Myth of Troy in Poetry and Art
Basel Museum of Ancient Art and Ludwig Collection, Basel, March 17 to August 17, 2008
Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, September 13, 2008 to January 18, 2009
This exhibition will comprise the following sections: Homer in his time; Homer’s works as the culmination of a long tradition of oral poetry; the great epics “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and the popularity of these works over the centuries. Read more... |
The Basel Museum of Ancient Art and Ludwig Collection, Switzerland, the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in Mannheim, Germany, and the Art Centre Basel, Switzerland, are jointly creating an exhibition which will focus on the myths and facts about the Greek poet-singer Homer and his two epics, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”, together with high-calibre works of art from the Bronze Age until today.
The Classical World
Museum of Arts & Sciences, Dyatona Beach, Florida, 14 March 2008 through 2009
Read more about the exhibition: |
Laura Stewart reports on the exhibition: "The 200 pieces of The Classical World exhibit tell the story of life in Greece, Etruria and Rome between about 8,500 B.C. to 476 A.D. It's a staggering span, one that traces the rise of civilization from the Neolithic era to the age of classical Greece and on through Rome's rise and fall. What lingers is a sense of pride and human frailty, and an appreciation for objects that were both beautiful and useful."
An exhibition of contemporary icons by Greek artists
Gordon Gallery, Derry, N. Ireland, 12 March to 12 April 2008
 The Hellenic Foundation for Culture in UK in collaboration with gordon gallery, is bringing together a collection of contemporary icons by some of the leading iconographers and painters of Greece. The exhibition is presented at the Gordon Gallery, in Derry, N. Ireland. Read more...
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Fred Boissonnas Itinerary to Mount Athos, 1928-1930
Hellenic Foundation for Culture, Berlin, 17 January to 28 March 2008
Boissonnas, aiming at creating and promoting the positive images of Greece and having won complete recognition by successive Greek governments, travelled in 1928 and 1930 to Mount Athos. The 400 photos that are found in his archive are related to the monastic architecture, either as general views of the interior yards or as close and detailed shots. Read more... |
The exhibition of Swiss photographer Frédéric Boissonas’ photos of Mount Athos, shot during 1928-1930, highlights the architectural and natural features of Mount Athos.
The restoration of the Acropolis and the New Acropolis Museum
Pergamon Museum, Berlin, 6 March to 25 May, 2008
 The New Acropolis Museum in Athens marks the end of a period of planning and discussion that has lasted for more than 30 years. The exhibition at the Berlin Pergamon Museum showcases photographic documentaion of the restoration and preservation works carried out on the Acropolis monuments, life-scale models of the rooms of the New Acropolis Museum created in Athens to house the exhibits, and representative finds of the excavations in the area of construction of the new Museum, such as portrait busts of Aristotle and Plato, statues of Isis Panthea and Zeus Iliopolitis, and other exhibits. Read more...
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From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000–1100 B.C.
Onassis Cultural Center, New York, March 13 to September 13, 2008
The exhibition brings to light aspects of Minoan daily life during the second and third millennia B.C., including social structure, communications, bureaucratic organization, religion, and technology.
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The exhibition "From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000–1100 B.C." presents more than 280 artifacts and works of art from the ancient land of Crete, most of which have never been shown outside Greece. These fascinating objects seen together bring to life the story of Crete’s luminous Minoan culture, the first palatial civilization to establish itself on European soil.
The New Greek and Roman Galleries
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The New Greek and Roman Galleries house art created between about 900 B.C. and the early fourth century A.D., tracing the parallel stories of the evolution of Greek art in the Hellenistic period and the arts of southern Italy and Etruria and culminating in the rich and varied world of the Roman Empire. The astonishing assembly of works on display—some never before seen by the public—bring to life the visual and conceptual roots of Western civilization.
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There is no event in the upcoming season that is so defining for the life of the Metropolitan Museum, for New York, and for art lovers around the world than the completion of the New Greek and Roman Galleries, involving the installation of thousands of works of classical art from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre
Singapore, December 9 2007 to March 16 2008
