Saturday, October 31, 2009

Postcard from Athens—the Museum Edition

Say “Athens,” and people will say, “The Acropolis.”

So during my stay in Athens last week at the conference, there must be a visit to the famed high point of the city of Athens. I have been there before, in 2005, but it was especially exciting to re-visit the dramatic site since the brand-new Acropolis Museum opened just a few months ago in June.

One of the locals explained how the design of this new museum had created such tension throughout the city of Athens: Who wants a modern design of a museum sticking out of our famous walk up the hill to the Acropolis? It looked positively ugly in design! What about the ruins underneath the site? Indeed, it was another example of the visual shock that museums and monuments often cultivate in the angry debates of how art should look in our modern world.

I was very interested to see how the museum looked and felt—I have become fascinated in the last 10 years or so with how the design of a museum can transform the learning experience (and dare I even sound so pretentious as to say the “spiritual” experience???) of a museum-goer. I remember in 2000 in the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis being blown away by the sheer design of how they shaped your reaction to the history of the civil rights movement. And I have watched how my beloved Metropolitan Museum in NYC has transformed wings of the museum to heighten and deepen the experience. And, of course, controversy is always fun if you are not one of the screamers on the sidelines!

Some of our contingent from KA decided not to go on the guided tour of the Acropolis. Seriously? You are in Athens, you have never been up to the Acropolis, and shoe shopping wins out? As one of my colleagues sniffed, “It’s just not my style.” Okay…

Julianne was the most excited—I can’t believe I get to go to the Parthenon with you!!—she squealed. As she said, if you have ever taught history, read about history, or just have been aware of history, you need to go to the Parthenon. It’s like the Great Wall in China, and the Pyramids (all places I have visited in the last few years) it is important just to be there.

Okay, so we start the walk up to the Acropolis. We pass by the theater—the theater where Greeks say Drama was born. We pass by the spot where Pericles delivered one of the most famous speeches in world history, his “Funeral Oration.” You know it started out as an angry mob of mothers deriding the elected leader Pericles for the disastrous results in a war, and he scooped them up Ronald-Reagan style (or perhaps Ronnie just simply channeled Pericles all the time) and offered this speech about how their sons had not died in vain, but for the cause of Athens, and the women left quite aware and moved by the heroic sacrifice their sons had made.

So we come to the museum—a stunningly jagged design with reflective glass on the outside. What does it reflect? Ahhhh….what is behind us, the Parthenon! And we realize we are now walking on a clear sidewalk so that we can see the ruins of ancient Athens below us as we walk into the super-modern museum. So as you approach this new structure you are aware of the past both under you and behind you, and quite struck by the modern and beautiful need to preserve that past and reflect ancient glories.

I remember the old Acropolis Museum. It sat up near the Parthenon—great view outside, but positively shabby inside. It looked like a warehouse in New Jersey—apologies to anyone from the Garden State—not really like the reliquary of the statuary though from a Golden Age.

Truth be told, there are not many pieces on the Varsity Team of Classical Greek art in this museum—most of the A-list is somewhere else in the world, like Rome, Paris, London, or New York—but what Athens has, is showcased in the most beautiful fashion. There are some stars here—the Archaic Calf-Bearer, some lovely Kore statues, and the Kritios Boy, and the gorgeous carytids from the Erechteion—but you want to drink it all in because of the showcasing. The wall text is compelling and they make each pottery fragment significant in the telling of the story of Greek life and art.

This is certainly a teaching museum. Unlike the stuffy, cramped Cairo Museum (although that place looks like Indiana Jones is about to run around a corner in that place!) with the stacks of Egyptian art, this museum has sought the best place and light for each piece. Each pediment has been explained in a marvelous teacherly fashion. Our guide is obviously caught up in the new museum (by the way, they want to make sure the tourists get the idea that it is new, and they officially call themselves, “The New Acropolis Museum”) and she promises to let us go wander, but she just can’t help herself to point out one more stele or statue.

Julianne and I walk around by ourselves for awhile, and then we ascend to the 3rd floor. This floor is an especially important floor. They recreate the Parthenon on this floor, bringing down almost to our level the beauties of the sculptural program designed by Phidias. As you walk around the gargantuan floor, seeing how the stories of Athena’s birth or Athena’s contest with Poseidon play out, it is an obvious plea to the British Museum for the return the “real” statuary.

About two hundred years ago the British removed most of the statuary from the Parthenon and took it back to London for safe-keeping. It is on display in an exceptionally beautiful wing of the British Museum. At times over the years the debate has become quite heated about whether or not Athens could have back its own Parthenon sculptures. The British always said that more people would see them in London than Athens, and that they take better care of art.

The New Acropolis Museum has created a whole reproduction of the Parthenon, and where possible, they put original fragments, and then for most of it, they have made plaster reproductions. The place is ready for the original sculptures should the British decide to return the sculptures.

It was a sumptuous museum and prepared us for the thrill of surmounting the Acropolis, seeing the harbor of Athens (site of a crucial naval battle, and the heart of the maritime trade bonanza for the Athenians) seeing the rocks where Paul declared the message of Christianity when he came to the home of great educators, seeing the 1896 Olympic Stadium, and the rest of Athens. A glorious afternoon.

Julianne and I hoped to steal a little time to visit an Islamic Art museum in Athens as well. We decided we could skip a speaker on the last day to find the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art. Mr. Benaki was an uber-wealthy cotton merchant a century ago, and he left money and his art collection to the Greek government. There are now 3 Benaki museums and we weren’t sure which one was which. We headed toward the one we had past the other night going out for dinner. It was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel, and that museum is housed in the old Benaki family mansion. The clock is ticking on our trip to Athens and we had about 90 minutes before we had to head back to pack and leave.

Curses! That wasn’t the Benaki museum of Islamic Art—okay, the woman shows us a map and we jump in a taxi. The taxi ride is long and going through a couple of sketchy neighborhoods. He lets us out in a very industrial part of town. Hmmmmm…we walk around the block and every sign is in Greek (insert it’s all Greek to me! Joke here). We peek inside the as-not-yet-open museum and decide this is the Benaki Modern. We look for a cab and some help…remember the clock is ticking…I should add that Julianne picks up the cab fare since she knows I like paying for cabs about as much as I like lobotomies.

He speeds us to the great 19th century townhouse that contains the Islamic art treasures. We have one hour—perfect. The museum covers 13 centuries but is the kind of museum that can be enjoyed in one hour and you feel as if you just had a great tutorial. The museum focuses on the role of Islam in the Mediterranean world and its links with Greco-Roman traditions. There are lustrous ceramics, inscribed textiles from Egypt, and superb inlaid metalware. The showstopper is an inlaid marble floor from a 17th century Cairo mansion.

We were rewarded at the café on the rooftop terrace with a spectacular view of the Acropolis above us and the ancient agora below.

Mad dash back to the hotel to pack and check out and head back to the work that awaits us at KA.

First-time visitors to Athens seem torn between the remnants of the ancient world and the innovations of the new, between the gods and the shops of Plaka, between ruins of buildings and the green-covered terraces of Kolanaki. Ah, but returning visitors know to enjoy all of both worlds, as do the Athenians themselves.

1 comment:

Neal Hitch said...

This was a great blog. Good travel writing, interspersed with personal stories to keep your reader engaged. You give a great, quick critic of the Acropolis Museum designed by Bernard Tschumi, a deconstructivist architect based in New York who also designed the new Lindner Athletic Center at the University of Cincinnati. I hope that I get to Athens one day.