Ten Stunning Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Art
The Winged Victory of Samothrace. Credit: Xin Sy /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0
There are countless masterpieces of Ancient Greek art scattered in museums around the world, serving as a reminder that Greece is the cradle of Western Civilization.
These are works of unparalleled beauty, precious monuments of the world’s rich heritage that still mesmerize viewers and will continue to do so in the generations to come.
The Pergamon Altar: an Ancient Greek masterpiece in Asia Minor
” width=”1080″>Gigantomachy frieze on the Pergamon Altar. Credit: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0
Built about 150 BC on the Acropolis the highest point of the ancient Greek city of Pergamon in Asia Minor, the Altar of Zeus at Pergamon, near modern-day Izmir, Turkey, is a masterpiece of ancient Greek art from the Hellenistic period.
With the spirit of the Greek Revolution of 1821 in our hearts and minds, Elly Symons, Co-Founder of the Acropolis Research Group and Vice President of the Australian Parthenon Committee, met with the Greek Culture Minister, Dr Lina Mendoni, to discuss the Parthenon Sculptures campaign.
Recent comments by British PM Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden continue to highlight the British side’s intransigence. This stonewalling continues to frustrate Hellenes and Philhellenes the world over.
For many years the British position resorted to various straw-man arguments, the most obvious one being that there was ‘nowhere to display them’. This argument was of course rendered otiose with the opening of the sublime Acropolis Museum which beautifully displays the extant half of the sculptures. In London, the other half remain isolated and decontextualized in the gloomy confines of the British Museum’s Duveen Gallery.
Tourist hotspots like the canals of Venice and the Louvre in Paris should be digitally replicated as a way to tackle overcrowding, a Swiss economist says.
Bruno Frey, 79, a professor at the University of Basel, has written a book called Venedig ist uberall (Venice is Everywhere).
In it, he says technologies like holograms, augmented reality (AR) and multimedia experiences could replicate tourist locations even better than the originals .
Technologies could not only replicate buildings like museums, but the precious historical artefacts that are housed within them.
The digital hotspots would be near to the original locations and try to recreate the sounds and smells, bolstered by exciting and immersive media presentations.
It was Ian Jenkins’s mother, Lena, who suggested he should apply for the post of a junior research assistant in the department of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum. On his appointment in 1978, he arrived at the grand portals in Bloomsbury, central London, in his Wiltshire boots, the tools of his recent experience as an apprentice stonemason slung in his belt, only to discover that the job was rather more academic than anticipated. He began as he intended to go on, turning tasks that others considered humdrum into gold mines of academic and public interest. Nimbly sidestepping internal conflicts and rivalries, he built collegiate teams within the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, the department of prints and drawings, the British Museum Education Service, the Joint Association of Classical Teachers, the Hellenic Society and far beyond.