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.

✍️Calliope—writers

Poets and novelists, their houses, their manuscripts, their words.

📜Clio—historians

Calliope’s sister, entrusted with the past and with those who write it down.

🎭Euterpe—music and dance

Calliope’s sister, entrusted with the past and those who write it down.

🙏Polyhymnia—solemn rites

Ceremony and ritual, religious ones among them, and whatever they have left behind in stone and in daily habit.

🏗️Urania—architecture

In my department the muse of astronomy also looks after what gets built on the ground.

⚒Vulcan—the crafts

Things made by hand and for the hand: clay, metal, cloth, tools.

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.

Read, like, comment. Welcome aboard!