Vacation from Athens, or, Why It's Awesome to Live in Europe

On my sticky note To-Do list for the week, which I made last Friday, I included "blog about how AWESOME Paris was!"  This was a bit presumptuous on my part, but also designed to cheer me up when I got home and not be too sad the adventure was over.  Well, one way to be excited to be back home in Athens is to get stuck on your Paris vacation longer than you intended due to a missed flight.  That part is boring and depressing, so I'll skip it.  But maybe it was just the universe's way of making me feel happy to be back, happy to be in Athens, happy to be home.

But! Back to weekend vacation adventures!  One of my college roommates lives in London now, and we had been planning all fall to figure out some time and some place to meet up in Europe while I was in Greece.  We chose this weekend, in Paris.  It turned out that we are excellent travel companions because we both like to 1) go to museums, 2) eat food, and 3) walk around looking at stuff.

The first Sunday of the month in Paris, several museums are free.  That meant that we went to the Louvre on Saturday, but saved the Musee d'Orsay for Sunday, and threw in a visit to Sant Chappelle while we were at it.  The Louvre completed my pilgrimage to the three museums containing the majority of sculpture from the Parthenon (more about that in another post, I think).  It's hard to gauge my overall impression, so I'll share a few impressionistic thoughts:  I was most struck by the historicity of the building itself, which is integrated into the museum presentation in a very cool way, with the history of the architecture and the objects held within the space not really competing, but not existing in complete harmony either.

Hall of Glass.  Hannah is bored but doing an admirable job pretending not to be.

On the way to the Mona Lisa - which, actually, impressed me much more than I thought it would - were fantastic examples of medieval paintings with elements of Greek and Roman myth which I found fascinating.

This.

Also this.

Running out of time, I was walking quickly through the Roman galleries when a low relief sculpture caught my eye, and I thought to myself "that looks like the Ara Pacis."  Turns out, that's exactly what it was. Just, you know.  Hanging out.  Did you know it was there????  Because I sure didn't.

Ara Pacis, on the right; Augustus on the left.

I didn't take photos of our fancy 'bistro' meal at A la Biche au Bois, mostly because we were so tightly wedged into our table that I couldn't really get to my bag to get my camera. The food was good, but not exceptional after reading all the glowing online reviews.  However, I did take pictures of the better splurge, which was our tea time at Laduree in St. Germain, famous for their macaroons.  Did we each order both cake and macaroons?  Yes, yes we did.

We found another, cheaper but less posh, place to get takeaway macaroons to bring home.  Although they got a bit crushed* and didn't really make it all the way home, I sure enjoyed them in the airport.  The cheese did make it back to Athens, where it awaits me in the refrigerator. Cheese, while smellier, is more crush proof.

All in all, it was a really lovely weekend.  Thinking about and planning for the trip really got me through the last couple weeks here in Greece, and I'm very happy to have had the experience of jetting off to Paris for the weekend.  But, I have to say - it's quite nice* to be home. Home, as in the country where I have figured out the airport transportation, know my way around the city, and can sit in peace in my little room eating a gyro or go down to the saloni to drink ouzo with friends whom I will be happy to see.

*Side effect of only speaking English with a Londoner all weekend: picking up all sorts of Britishisms, or at least things that sound like Britishisms in my head for the moment.

The little things amongst the large

I might be a little obsessed with the current rotating exhibit at the National Archaeological Museum.  I've gone twice in the last week.  I may well stop by again on Friday.  (In fairness, we've been in the museum for other things; it's just nice to stop in for a visit!)  The exhibit is about the Antikythera Shipwreck, which crashed off the shores of Greece around 60 BCE, probably on its way to Italy.  I love this exhibit because of a) the cool technology and modern exhibition strategies used in the show,

This is just a video, but there are holograms used to recreate the functionality of the Antikythera Mechanism!

 b) awesome late Hellenistic pottery and miscellaneous objects from daily life aboard the ship,

So many lagynoi! Aren't they great!?!

and c) pretty, pretty glass vessels!

But, my very favorite object in the entire exhibit is this little guy, who can't be more than a centimeter and a half tall, and most people probably never notice:

If you'll allow me to geek out for a few minutes:  he's a glass pendent of a type found all over the eastern Mediterranean in the second and first centuries BCE, including Cyprus, Egypt, Delos, Dura-Europas (Syria), southern Russia and...Tel Anafa!  See, there's one like him in the collection of glass beads and pendents which I studied way back in my Masters' degree days (one day, that publication will come out ::knocks on so much wood::).  This one was previously unpublished, but it fits beautifully into the series of known objects - of which there are a ton.  But why he's exciting is because, just like all the others, he is a unique snowflake.  Lots of people have suggested that pendants like this were made at one central workshop and then distributed through trade.  But I have a theory, based largely on the variation in the way they're made, that they are actually made all over the place, in small workshops catering to local consumers.  It's also interesting to think that this piece was almost certainly being worn when the ship crashed - by a sailor, by a passenger... who knows?  I need to look into this a bit, but I think that statistically, therefore, it is much more likely that a man was the wearer than a woman; considering this has been often considered a apotropaic/fertility symbol, and that jewelry and pendents are almost universally - and completely erroneously - associated with females in the archaeological record, the presence of this little guy on a ship, as opposed to a settlement or domestic context, might have some strong implications. 

On my second visit, I caved and bought the 46 euro exhibition catalog.  It has already given me immense joy, paging through the beautifully illustrated assemblage of objects narrowly dated to exactly the period in which I'm most interested.  I have a feeling this is a book to which I will return again and again.  Nothing makes academics happier than buying books, and I am a happy, happy academic right now.

Here he is!

The first few days in Athens

Arrived in Greece on Friday morning after a disappointing flight on Air Canada (what kind of trans-Atlantic flight doesn't have personal entertainment systems these days?), and promptly met another incoming member at baggage claim.  I'm surprised, generally, at how good it feels to be out of Ann Arbor.  After taking the rest of Friday to get unpacked and settled in, I spent the weekend wandering the streets and markets, consumed my first official glasses of frappe, retsina, and Mythos at outdoor cafes, glimpsed the Acropolis, Temple of Olympian Zeus, Hephaistion, Arch of Hadrian, and more, and saw the parade of the evzones guard in front of Parliament, and met more people in the field of Classics than I have in the previous three years combined.

Large parade of guardsmen (with the pompom shoes!) and a military band which we happened to catch on our way to the Acropolis Museum, but only because we got a slow start to the morning and were running half an hour late.

The biggest event, however, was probably our visit to the Acropolis Museum.  I wanted to do something touristy on Sunday to really feel like I was in Athens, and I've wanted to go to the new museum since it opened in 2009.  Having just been to the British Museum in March, where the majority of sculpture from the Parthenon has been since the early 19th century, I was eager to compare the two display types.  (For those unfamiliar with the whole Elgin Marbles controversy... it's a big thing.)  I had heard that the new museum presented a compelling case that the sculptures should be repatriated to Greece, where they could be displayed in sight of the original building.  Being rather of two minds about the ethics on both sides, I was ready to be convinced.

Yet, I found myself... unconvinced, still.  Certainly, in this wonderful new museum with all sorts of marvelous ancient carved stone, the top floor of the building with its white cast impressions of extraordinary sculptural achievement is sadly anticlimactic.  But, I just didn't find the proposed alternative display in Athens to be any better or worse than the way the sculptures are in London.  The Greeks had a chance to really show the argument for context - that the sculpture can only be understood and appreciated in the place it was meant to be, in relation to the building, it had original meaning beyond a work of art, etc - but instead the display is rather similar to the Brits, much more "art historical" (i.e. aesthetic for sake of aesthetics) than "archaeological" (i.e. contextual).

Sculpture from the Parthenon at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens (top, obviously) and the British Museum in London (bottom, somewhat less obviously).

We'll be back to the Acropolis and its museum several more times in the months ahead, and I'm going to continue to evolve in my impressions of the objects and their museum display settings.  But tomorrow, we get to go inside the Hephaistion overlooking the ancient Agora, and that is pretty cool indeed. 

This belongs in a museum!

Friends (at least those of you who have me on your RSS feed and so will actually see this).

I have chosen to break radio silence to bring you tidings of great joy. Click here. Go. Don't worry. I'll wait.

...... did you click? Really? Are you sure? Last chance. OK.

OMIGOODNESSSOEXCITINGIT'SLIKEEVERYTHINGILOVEALLINONESINGLETHING squeeeeeeeeeeee!

Right???? I'm practically at a loss for words and am totally squealing with glee. It's everything I adore, everything that I'm passionate about, every reason I started this blog, all rolled into one pile of AWESOME. I don't even care that it will probably not be very good and disappointing on all levels. It EXISTS!

In all (exuberant) seriousness, the exhibit does raise some really interesting issues concerning the confluence of pop culture and academic science. I'm really interested to see how the curators juxtapose "real" objects with movie props. From the photo slide show, it looks like they picked archaeological objects that are rather similar to some key props from the movies. Will that have the effect of undermining the authenticity of the "real" objects, or make it more powerful? How will they tell the story of scientific archaeology through a leitmotif that bears no resemblance to it in any substantive way? (Except perhaps the common headgear, which is a beautiful example of life coming to imitate the art.)

Also of interest here are the primary partners and sponsors: National Geographic Society, Lucasfilms, and the Penn Museum (a highly credible institution). I brought this very topic up in my Museum Studies seminar this week, and someone wondered who initiated this exhibition concept and why. I immediately, knee-jerk reacted that it must be Lucasfilms (which has also done Star Wars exhibits) and they must be expecting a fair amount of revenue to be generated. But, upon further contemplation I think it's more than that. Indiana Jones has been a gateway for many people to understand what archaeology is and what it does (well...sort of). A museum show is conceivably the perfect forum for Indy and science to be put side by side, so that one may inform the other. The trick, however, will be doing it well. And doing it well will be ever so much more difficult than doing it poorly. But the criteria for success of this exhibit should be to clarify the

Press release-type information is here, as well as a promotional video, for those so inclined. It's pretty interesting stuff. (A nice touch is the "This belongs in a museum!!!" "So do you!" exchange from Last Crusade.)

So, Montreal? Next summer? Anyone? (I will note that Ann Arbor to Montreal is an 11 hour drive, which is only an hour and a half more than some people I know have been willing to drive in order to go to a museum for the weekend.)

Women, women

One more reason to go to New York - before May 9th.

The reviewer of the exhibit about women in Ancient Greece at the Onassis Cultural Center does seem to conflate woman-as-goddess and the actual role of women in the polis. I wonder if the actual exhibit does the same? Though based on the name, "Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens," it seems as if it might.

On a somewhat related note, I saw a paper at the November conference in Calgary which identified women in Greek vases based on their headdresses. According to the author of the paper, a certain type of scarf/headdress always indicates that the woman portrayed is a prostitute. Cool!