Concordia CMLL Study Tour

By Vanessa Sader

We started the bright and early at the National Museum of Archeology, which acts as a hub for artifacts from all over, rather than being dedicated to a specific movement or region. It houses many iconic objects that we have seen in our textbooks, such as the Artemision Bronze which was incredibly surreal to see for many of us. To be able to see monuments and sculptures that most of us have been studying for over a year feels life changing to say the least, but it also still feels like we are still not seeing the real things, as it is difficult to comprehend that these things were truly used and made centuries ago. Something that stuck out to me (other than the Cycladic hedgehog) is the difference between the Acropolis Museum which we visited yesterday and the National Museum. While the Acropolis Museum is dedicated to a specific site and follows a theme throughout, the National Museum sometimes places things together that have nothing to do with each other chronologically. I think that while some people might not like this, having different things together blurs the lines between cultures and shows how different groups often have the same ideas. For instance, there was a display of numerous iron tools and items from many groups of people, but somehow, they all followed a common thread; we as humans are often very unoriginal in our creations of tools. Another difference in these two museums can be seen in the way they treat the pieces. At the National Museum everything feels very “art historical”, many of the pieces seem like they stand on their own, even though they are sometimes placed in categories, such as “Hellenistic” or “classical”. The Acropolis Museum the other hand felt like there was a cohesive story to be told, but that was likely because it all came from the same site. Much like the Acropolis Museum, many of the other museums we will be visiting will be dedicated to the regions in which they live. Naturally we are all very excited for this, and to be exposed to all of the Greek culture that we can get our hands on (even if sometimes this culture provides very stressfully slow restaurant service)

~An Early Cycladic II hedgehog from Chalandriani, Syros.

~The Artemision Zeus (ca. 450 BCE) , found off Cape Artemision.