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.
Numidian Nomads and Cato’s Monomania
The interdiction against waging war without Rome’s express permission was established not in the name
The Wrong Nomads
The Scythians have always been useful to other people. Herodotus devoted the fourth book of
📜Clio—historians
Calliope’s sister, entrusted with the past and with those who write it down.
How Does a Museum Speak?
…Through its exhibits. There are those for whom a museum remains mute until an official
🎭Euterpe—music and dance
Calliope’s sister, entrusted with the past and those who write it down.
Culture on the Edge of Agglutination
A trip to the Atatürk Cultural Centre (AKM) at Taksim is invariably a bit of
Tainted Classics and Soviet Relics
We recently took a flight to Yerevan for the express purpose of visiting the Opera
🙏Polyhymnia—solemn rites
Ceremony and ritual, religious ones among them, and whatever they have left behind in stone and in daily habit.
On Ways, Quirks and Reversed Perspective
Inscrutable, as we are so frequently reminded, are the ways of Providence. Having duly paid
A Guide to Winged Angelology
This wooden cherub of nineteenth-century vintage once adorned a house transported from the abandoned settlement
🏗️Urania—architecture
In my department the muse of astronomy also looks after what gets built on the ground.
The Golden Crown of Soviet Alma-Ata
The Hotel Kazakhstan is widely regarded as one of the principal symbols of Almaty. Having
How Does a Museum Speak?
…Through its exhibits. There are those for whom a museum remains mute until an official
⚒Vulcan—the crafts
Things made by hand and for the hand: clay, metal, cloth, tools.
After the Collapse
At some point the mentions of Hayasa disappear from the Hittite annals, suddenly and completely.
Hayasa, or the Argument About a Name
In the second millennium BC the Hittites arrived in Anatolia. On the prevailing theory this
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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