Yesterday afternoon, I took a trip over to Athens' National Archaeological Museum. My goal was to photograph a bronze object for a friend and track down a couple of other objects for my Research Assistant project.
Besides taking care of these things, I was greatly happy (and mildly surprised) to find almost the entire museum open. This included both the bronze collection and the vase collection, both of which were closed on every occasion I visited the NAM last year. Of course, the few hours I spent there wasn't nearly enough time to cover everything. And, just as I was getting ready to leave, my eye caught a small room off the main hallway, where there was an exhibition on the Antikythera Shipwreck.
I'd seen the Antikythera Mechanism before, of course, as well as other sculptures from the wreck, such as this bronze philosopher portrait:
But here, everything from the shipwreck has been brought together, including a number of sculptures that had previously been located in the museum's courtyard, and often overlooked. These sculptures, all of Parian marble and thus probably from the same workshop, are really interesting because they show how the seawater and its inhabitants have eaten away at the marble while the parts of the sculptures that were buried beneath the surface of the sea have been preserved. And the display is excellent (thought I probably could have done without the strobe-like "underwater" lighting):
A whole room is devoted to the Antikythera Mechanism itself, showcasing not only the fragments of the mechanism, but the various reconstructions of it, as well as the history and conservation of the object. What I found most fascinating was the display case with the Antikythera Mechanism: not only did it have a digital, 3-D reconstruction projected on the glass, but the lighting was so good that I could make out some of the inscriptions:
The exhibition is up until April 2013, so check it out!
Besides taking care of these things, I was greatly happy (and mildly surprised) to find almost the entire museum open. This included both the bronze collection and the vase collection, both of which were closed on every occasion I visited the NAM last year. Of course, the few hours I spent there wasn't nearly enough time to cover everything. And, just as I was getting ready to leave, my eye caught a small room off the main hallway, where there was an exhibition on the Antikythera Shipwreck.
I'd seen the Antikythera Mechanism before, of course, as well as other sculptures from the wreck, such as this bronze philosopher portrait:
(doesn't he look rather philosopher-crazy?)
But here, everything from the shipwreck has been brought together, including a number of sculptures that had previously been located in the museum's courtyard, and often overlooked. These sculptures, all of Parian marble and thus probably from the same workshop, are really interesting because they show how the seawater and its inhabitants have eaten away at the marble while the parts of the sculptures that were buried beneath the surface of the sea have been preserved. And the display is excellent (thought I probably could have done without the strobe-like "underwater" lighting):
A whole room is devoted to the Antikythera Mechanism itself, showcasing not only the fragments of the mechanism, but the various reconstructions of it, as well as the history and conservation of the object. What I found most fascinating was the display case with the Antikythera Mechanism: not only did it have a digital, 3-D reconstruction projected on the glass, but the lighting was so good that I could make out some of the inscriptions:
The exhibition is up until April 2013, so check it out!
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