Symposia in a museion
The word museum goes back to Greek μουσεῖον, which first meant a sanctuary of the Muses—a place where they led their dances, dances that were themselves called mouseia—by the same pattern as a Heraion (a temple of Hera) or a Serapeum (a temple of Serapis). Later it came to mean a “gathering” in the broadest sense: Plato, in the Phaedrus, uses it in the phrase “a gathering of [wise] speeches” (μουσεῖα λόγων).
On this blog, the Museion is a very wide section indeed. On its own it reports what I saw in the museums I visited—the modern heirs of those sanctuaries. But it also gathers into one virtual dance the Olympian patrons of its several subsections.
You can read straight through, or simply open a post at random and follow the links to earlier, later and related pieces until you have had enough.
🧑🎨Apollo — ✍️Calliope — 📜Clio — 🎭Euterpe — 🙏Polyhymnia — 🏗️Urania — ⚒Vulcan — and the 🏛️museums themselves!
🧑🎨Apollo—the fine arts
Painting, sculpture, drawing: everything people come to a museum to look at rather than to read.
On Ways, Quirks and Reversed Perspective
Inscrutable, as we are so frequently reminded, are the ways of Providence. Having duly paid
Vera Against the Wind. Part 5, Allegorical
The concluding gallery of the exhibition Vera Mukhina: Against the Wind is fittingly titled Allegory.
✍️Calliope—writers
Poets and novelists, their houses, their manuscripts, their words.
Second Only to Rome
The rise of Utica was short-lived. As the Romans began cultivating grain upstream from the
📜Clio—historians
Calliope’s sister, entrusted with the past and with those who write it down.
On Ways, Quirks and Reversed Perspective
Inscrutable, as we are so frequently reminded, are the ways of Providence. Having duly paid
An Etymological Dessert from Persian Apples
On Ribs, Heroes, and the Surprising Geography of Language Summer is upon us, bringing with
🎭Euterpe—music and dance
Calliope’s sister, entrusted with the past and those who write it down.
Gilgameş: An Exhumation in Three Acts
Last night I attended the world premiere of Ahmet Adnan Saygun‘s opera Gilgameş (1964–83), given
The Little Bride of the Armenian Highland
The wind is still fresh, the steppe is waking with reluctance, and she is already
🙏Polyhymnia—solemn rites
Ceremony and ritual, religious ones among them, and whatever they have left behind in stone and in daily habit.
The Straw That Learned to Write
There was in Proto-Indo-European a word *ḱolh₂mos, “straw, stalk.” From it descend Latin culmus, German
A Mosque That Names Itself
Two years after the Saltukids had married their way into three neighbouring houses, they began
🏗️Urania—architecture
In my department the muse of astronomy also looks after what gets built on the ground.
A King, an Unfinished Business, and the Teutonic Custom
Once upon a time there was a prince. What he liked above all things were
A Mosque That Names Itself
Two years after the Saltukids had married their way into three neighbouring houses, they began
⚒Vulcan—the crafts
Things made by hand and for the hand: clay, metal, cloth, tools.
No Neglect to Negliubka
I recently popped over to Minsk on business while I was in memleket. That is
Vera Against the Wind. Part 4, Vitreous
In the first and second acts of our perambulations through the exhibition Vera Mukhina: Against
The 🏛️museums themselves
The Museion began as a sanctuary and ended up as a building with a cloakroom and a ticket desk. This is what I saw in the museums as museums: arranged by gallery rather than by theme.
For the Average Visitor
At the entrance to the archaeology department of the Trabzon Museum the visitor is met
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