New Acropolis Museum Photo Essay: A Sneak Preview
It's too soon to "review" the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, because it's still a work-in-progress: Construction continues and few objects have been installed, except on the ground floor, where relatively minor but instructive archaeological finds unearthed during excavation for the museum are ingeniously and attractively arrayed in an educational gallery targeted to children.
Still, Bernard Tschumi's architecture is almost ready for its close-up, so a CultureGrrl photo essay is in order.
My impressions, like those of several commentators who made a previous press trip, were mostly favorable. But I was conducted on a quick, crowded tour, without much time to experience and contemplate the interiors, so these are first takes. A museum without its objects is just a shell. How the impressively monumental spaces will work as exhibition galleries is still an open question. How the bathrooms work as plumbing spaces is, however, already known. Let's just say: They'd better be a work-in-progress!
Speaking of the installation of objects---I received a cryptic note from someone intimately involved in creating the new museum, thanking me for my "thoughtful" criticism of the plan to install faithful copies of the missing Parthenon marbles alongside authentic slabs and suggesting that a change might still be possible: "We are working on it!"
What a relief! (Pun intended...of course.)
Here's what I saw:
However, as I lived with the building during two days of attending conference panels, the exterior began to grow on me. Maybe it was all that talk about digs and finds, but I began to see its structure as techtonic, evoking geological and archaeological strata.
Below is the educational gallery on the main floor, with a large array of objects found during the excavation, arranged to illustrate various themes: "Time for Prayer," "What's for Dinner?" and that ancient Greek favorite, "When Men Got Together." (Let's not go there.)
From there, you make an Acropolis-worthy climb up a very long stairway:
Approaching those stairs, you magically float over more finds, revealed beneath polka-dotted glass (below). I found the pattern on the glass annoying, until I realized it was probably there to calm acrophobic visitors with some visual assurance that the floor was indeed solid. A high-heeled companion assured me that the surface felt stiletto-friendly:
At the top of the stairs, Dimitris Pandermalis, president of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, began walking us through the gallery spaces, addressing us in front of the few original Acropolis sculptures already unpacked, cleaned and on view. The iconic Moschophoros statue, 570 B.C., of the patriot Romvos offering a sacrificial calf can be glimpsed behind and just to the left of Pandermalis, looking much whiter than I remember from my previous Athens sojourn:
Much of the museum still looks like this:
The photo below does not do justice to the view from the museum's top-floor Parthenon Gallery to the monument itself. It is gloriously breathtaking. And the darkened glass did not seem dark at all, gazing from the inside out. The quality of the natural light in the gallery does seem as magical as the Greeks had promised us.
When can you go there? Pandermalis indicated to me that the announced September opening of the new museum is, at this point, more wishful thinking than a done deal. The postponements just keep coming.
Who will be its director, though, once it finally does open? On this, I got the same answer from Pandermalis as I had from Alexander Mantis, director of the Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Acropolis:
Still, Bernard Tschumi's architecture is almost ready for its close-up, so a CultureGrrl photo essay is in order.
My impressions, like those of several commentators who made a previous press trip, were mostly favorable. But I was conducted on a quick, crowded tour, without much time to experience and contemplate the interiors, so these are first takes. A museum without its objects is just a shell. How the impressively monumental spaces will work as exhibition galleries is still an open question. How the bathrooms work as plumbing spaces is, however, already known. Let's just say: They'd better be a work-in-progress!
Speaking of the installation of objects---I received a cryptic note from someone intimately involved in creating the new museum, thanking me for my "thoughtful" criticism of the plan to install faithful copies of the missing Parthenon marbles alongside authentic slabs and suggesting that a change might still be possible: "We are working on it!"
What a relief! (Pun intended...of course.)
Here's what I saw:
When I first spotted the main entrance (above) from the street, my first sensation was letdown. The various layers of glass, concrete and steel looked to me like a jumbled hodgepodge, and the glass at the top-floor Parthenon Gallery looked so dark as to undermine the Greeks' assertion that it was important to see all the Parthenon Marbles in Athens because of the special quality of the sunlight.
But as I moved from the street to the glass walkway in the left foreground of the above picture, I was giddily skimming over the remnants of the ancient structures that were discovered and preserved by the excavators. Suddenly, all skepticism was vanquished by a museum experience quite unlike any other. Museum visitors will also be able to descend to the ruins and walk among them.
Continuing our tour: Things do appear even more disjointed as you walk around the exterior of the new building. I'm still not won over by that concrete lattice at the base. And I wonder what the neighbors thought about this alien creature that landed in their midst:
But as I moved from the street to the glass walkway in the left foreground of the above picture, I was giddily skimming over the remnants of the ancient structures that were discovered and preserved by the excavators. Suddenly, all skepticism was vanquished by a museum experience quite unlike any other. Museum visitors will also be able to descend to the ruins and walk among them.
Continuing our tour: Things do appear even more disjointed as you walk around the exterior of the new building. I'm still not won over by that concrete lattice at the base. And I wonder what the neighbors thought about this alien creature that landed in their midst:
However, as I lived with the building during two days of attending conference panels, the exterior began to grow on me. Maybe it was all that talk about digs and finds, but I began to see its structure as techtonic, evoking geological and archaeological strata.
Below is the educational gallery on the main floor, with a large array of objects found during the excavation, arranged to illustrate various themes: "Time for Prayer," "What's for Dinner?" and that ancient Greek favorite, "When Men Got Together." (Let's not go there.)
From there, you make an Acropolis-worthy climb up a very long stairway:
Approaching those stairs, you magically float over more finds, revealed beneath polka-dotted glass (below). I found the pattern on the glass annoying, until I realized it was probably there to calm acrophobic visitors with some visual assurance that the floor was indeed solid. A high-heeled companion assured me that the surface felt stiletto-friendly:
At the top of the stairs, Dimitris Pandermalis, president of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, began walking us through the gallery spaces, addressing us in front of the few original Acropolis sculptures already unpacked, cleaned and on view. The iconic Moschophoros statue, 570 B.C., of the patriot Romvos offering a sacrificial calf can be glimpsed behind and just to the left of Pandermalis, looking much whiter than I remember from my previous Athens sojourn:
Much of the museum still looks like this:
The photo below does not do justice to the view from the museum's top-floor Parthenon Gallery to the monument itself. It is gloriously breathtaking. And the darkened glass did not seem dark at all, gazing from the inside out. The quality of the natural light in the gallery does seem as magical as the Greeks had promised us.
When can you go there? Pandermalis indicated to me that the announced September opening of the new museum is, at this point, more wishful thinking than a done deal. The postponements just keep coming.
Who will be its director, though, once it finally does open? On this, I got the same answer from Pandermalis as I had from Alexander Mantis, director of the Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Acropolis:
It's a political decision.
Dimitris Pandermalis chatting with Greek Culture Minister Michalis Liapis, left, at the entrance to the New Acropolis Museum
March 28, 2008 12:55 PM
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CULTUREGRRL is your inside guide to the artworld, consulted daily by the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, scholars, critics, journalists and art lovers. Bringing wit and wisdom to informed, informative reviews of artworld events and issues, CultureGrrl (aka Lee Rosenbaum) is avidly read for her influential critiques of best and worst practices in the field.
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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I am contributing editor of Art in America magazine and a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School and on museum governance at Seton Hall University.
Contact me
ADVERTISE on CultureGrrl MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, AUCTION HOUSES, ART PUBLICATIONS, ARTS PROGRAMS---Join the ranks of CultureGrrl's inaugural advertisers (on right). Please go here to place an ad. For more information on advertising, e-mail here.
LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I am contributing editor of Art in America magazine and a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School and on museum governance at Seton Hall University. Contact me
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