Talk: Eurydice Georganteli, "Whose Culture? Archaeology, Byzantine Studies, and Modernity along Egnatia, 1864-1923"

Date: 

Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 2:00pm

Location: 

Founders Room, Dumbarton Oaks Museum, 1703 32nd St NW, Washington, DC 20007

Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 2 p.m.

Prof. Eurydice Georganteli, Byzantine Studies

Dumbarton Oaks, 1703 32nd St NW, Washington, DC 20007

The Via Egnatia, one of the oldest routes of cultural exchange, central to the history of Ancient and Medieval Europe, was before the mid 19th century an elusive entity for western intellectuals, antiquaries, collectors, and artists. This was to change in 1864 when French paleographer Emmanuel Miller tore apart a propylaeum that had stood by Thessaloniki’s Roman forum since the 2nd century CE, and shipped its exquisite sculptural figures to the Louvre. Similar acts of spoliation and appropriation of Egnatia’s cultural treasures continued on a systematic scale well after the end of WW1 and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. The lecture explores the adventures of the route and its antiquities in the context of armed conflict and the birth of nation-states in the region, the ascent of Archaeology and Byzantine Studies as academic disciplines, the development of the grand encyclopedic museums, and photography as both a medium to record the past and a distinct art form.

Eurydice Georganteli is Lecturer on Art History and Numismatics, Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Managing Editor of the Digital Atlas of Roman & Medieval Civilizations (DARMC)​ at Harvard University. Before her current appointment, she was the Keeper of Coins and Lecturer on Numismatics at the University of Birmingham, UK (2000–2016). A specialist in the arts of southeastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, Georganteli has excavated in Greece and held curatorial and visiting positions in Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2012–2016 she was the Principal Investigator of two European projects on cultural routes, heritage, and digital humanities.

 

Man guarding byzantine artefacts

See also: General