Greeks healing rifts
Can an Ashmolean exhibition on ancient Crete restore my faith in museums?
Museums have been an integral part of British culture since the 18th century fashioning both of a sense of the past and a pattern for the future.
For a burgeoning empire, the lure of the classical world was irresistible and many collections are now testaments to the profound hold Rome and Greece exerted over those centuries of dominion.
The Ashmolean Museum, founded in 1683, is the oldest in the English speaking world. Originally holding assorted coins, books and geological specimens, it was transformed by the 1884-1908 stewardship of Sir Arthur Evans into one of the great archaeological centres of research, with a particular emphasis on Minoan civilisation.
As a child, I was mystified by its endless corridors and abrupt transitions – the sudden shifts from Egypt to the Renaissance seemed like a mild form of time travel.
Undergirding the collection at the time was a stringent academic logic which made few concessions to popular sensibilities. Artefacts were approached through descriptions which assumed significant background knowledge.
In 2011, the museum received extensive renovation, dramatically reshaping the building’s structure and interior dynamics.
Attending the transformation, a new approach to curating was adopted. Gone were the technical classifications and recondite learning; accessibility was paramount.
This new mission to democratise the collection combined an admirable commitment to broadening appeal with susceptibility to voguish causes and anti-Western narratives. A gloss of approved guilt sometimes became an essential part of presenting the past.
As a critical well-wisher, I was drawn to the “Labyrinth” exhibition to see how the balance between education and ideology was maintained; to assess how the vast riches of lost civilisations are understand in an iconoclastic age.
“Labyrinth” refers to an intersection of myth and history where physical remains and imaginative legacies uneasily coexist. Even the term “Minoan”, by which ancient Crete is known, is based on a figure, King Minos, for whom very little evidence survives.
Minos is immortalised as the man who established the labyrinth in which the Minotaur, a hideous bull-man, would prey upon his victims.
His kingdom was based on the Bronze Age civilization dating from around 3,500BC and centred on Knossos in Crete.
The exhibition therefore engages both the material remnants of the site and the powerful force of legend it exerted on European culture.
From Vergil onwards, artists have been drawn to the savage energy of the story. James Joyce named his protagonist in Ulysses Daedalus after the architect of the maze. Perhaps the theme of chaos in the heart of a palace is endlessly potent for reinvention.
Spatially, the exhibition is contained in a sequence of interlinked rooms providing a natural continuum for linear developments and exposition.
The fabric of the displays are greatly enhanced both by the permanent collection of statuary and loan pieces from Greece. On entering, we encounter a marble sculpture of the Minotaur of dazzling grace from the Archaeological Museum of Athens, the 2,000-year-old form preserving exquisite form.
Such masterpieces are interspersed throughout and are supplemented by text and media installations. A glorious amphora depicting the death of the monster from 550 BC belongs to the Ashmolean, a welcome reminder of the strength of its own heritage.
Subtle lighting and sensitive positioning help create an immersive experience and preserve an exposure to mystery. One of the perils of curating is deadening response to the strange by fostering over familiarity. Here the exhilarating sense of the foreign is well maintained.
Bold directions are taken to involve younger generations with stills of Knossos Palace taken from the video game Assassins Creed. Though not integral, the use of such references does not detract from the seriousness of the exhibition and may well help people orientate the Classical world into a real setting.
Elements of revisionism occur when addressing the archaeological breakthroughs that led to mass discovery. Though credited with the finding at the time, the role of Sir Arthur Evans is reappraised. Previously neglected, the impetus of a Milos Kalokairnos, a local businessman is reasserted.
Questioning the legacy of their greatest director opens a crucial debate about excavation and the agency of Victorian scholars in historical research.
In our technocratic era, the achievements of Greece and Rome can seem remote; until the mid-20th century, they were perceived as coterminous with British and European culture. To Evans and his colleagues, Britain was the heir to these worlds and could properly appropriate their remnants. The loss of this belief is one of the sharpest separations between our times and theirs.
A digital video by Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price concludes the journey in a bracing and disruptive way. “A Restoration” layers images of frescoes and watercolours onto a shimmering electronic tableau as an automated voice guides us through the process of reassembling lost material.
It’s a jagged and ambiguous crescendo but its incompleteness does remind us that no single vision can ever wholly comprehend the Greek world. Neither the scientific processes of Evans nor the postmodern experiments of Price will ever give us mastery over the past.
Ultimately, I felt that this exhibition was a durable truce in the culture wars and a celebration of a great subject.
Purity will always be illusive and we shouldn’t be reluctant to address different perspectives when they are honestly presented.
Let’s hope great deposit of cultural treasure still possessed by great museums can be a threat to lead us out of our own current labyrinth.