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The international exhibition "Architecture as Icon. Perception and representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art", the first on this theme, will be presented from November 6th 2009 to January 31st 2010 at the Museum of Byzantine Culture. Offering new ways of looking at Byzantine art and architecture, the exhibition is the crowning of a joint research program carried out by the European Centre for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments and Princeton University, and explores the meanings and perception of architectural form and space as represented in Byzantine art.
The visitors will have an opportunity to see 80 art objects including icons, manuscripts, ivories, metal and stone objects as well as models of both secular buildings and churches chronologically spanning 15 Centuries. The works of art come from thirty of the most prominent museums and collections in Greece and ten other countries, including the Benaki Museum (Athens); the Procuratoria di San Marco (Venice); the Metropolitan Art Museum (New York); and the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg). Supported by explanatory texts and illustrative material, the works on display reveal spirituality that marks Byzantine architecture; the richness in interpretations of architectural forms and space -especially those at of the Byzantine church architecture, which reflects symbolic notions such as the celestial hierarchy and the relation between man and divine power; the two-dimensional representations of reality and the emphasis on the imaginary, as well as the encounter of these concepts with the Renaissance ideas and principles.
After its presentation in Thessaloniki the exhibition co-organized by the European Center for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments and the Princeton University Art Museum, will be mounted at the University of Princeton Art Museum, from March 6th to June 7th 2010.
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The "adventures" and successive uses of
objects that today belong in the
collections of the Museum of Byzantine
Culture, or can be seen in monuments in
Thessaloniki, are presented in the
desk-diary entitled "Reused", published
by the Museum and its Friends
Association.
Through the introduction by the
archeologist Evaggelia Aggelkou and
impressive illustrations, the diary
sheds light to different moments in the
life of objects from the Early
Christian, Byzantine and Postbyzantine
periods, which have been reused,
converted into something else, repaired
or recycled.
Coins that have been "overstruck" –i.e.
old coins that were struck again with a
new image; broken plates and jars that
have been mended with lead; pieces of
broken vessels that have been used as
loom weights or as stoppers for wine or
oil amphorae; metal and broken glass
objects that were melted down in
furnaces so that new objects could be
created from the molten material; broken
pieces of marble that were used to
produce lime; coins that have been used
for jewellery as well as dosserets that
have been converted to well-curbs or to
basins for fountains, all reflect
Byzantine people's spirit of economy
both in homes and in society at large.
«Any object in a museum's collections
has been used for something other than
its original purpose, in virtue of the
fact that it has been museified»,
notes the President of the Museum of
Byzantine Culture Friends Association
Prof. N. Nikonanos.
«Yet
these artefacts have their own
"life
stories"
to tell,
of eventful journeys through space and
time, different uses and users, changing
values and meanings. This year's diary
takes a look at what happened to certain
objects from the Museum of Byzantine
Culture after they had served their
original purpose but before they became
museum pieces.»
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