18th September - 18th December, Thessaloniki

 

MAIN PROGRAMME: A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

PARALLEL PROGRAMME

GUEST EVENTS

Exhibition

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE Museum of Byzantine Culture

The Museum of Byzantine Culture aims to present various aspects of life during the byzantine and post-byzantine periods, including art, ideology, social structure and religion, as well as how historical changes and the political situation affected people’s everyday lives. At the same time, the activity of the Department of Educational Programmes, the good structure and function of the conservation laboratories and of the archaeological material storerooms, the provision of scientific know-how to other Balkan countries, the organisation of scientific meetings and conferences, as well as the editing and publishing work, have made the Museum into an exceptionally important centre for the preservation, research and promotion of Byzantine and post byzantine culture. Since the Museum’s inauguration in 1994, an annual bulletin has been published, the first of its kind

by a Greek public museum.

The Museum of Byzantine Culture is housed in a modern building 11.500 m² wide, of which 3.000 m² comprise the permanent exhibition area. The building was constructed between the years 1989-1993 based on the plans of the talented architect Kyriakos Krokos (1941-1998), a personality both contemplative and poetic. Among the best works of public architecture of the last decades in Greece, the building has received a special notion by the international committee of the competition “Awards 2000” of the Hellenic Institute for Architecture. In 2000 the Ministry of Culture has declared it a historically listed monument, and a work of art.

The permanent exhibition of the Museum of Byzantine Culture presents various aspects of Byzantine art and culture, as well as of the following era, after the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. There are 2,900 artifacts, organized in display units which narrate, in chronological order, “short stories”. They present, in a comprehensive and pleasant way, aspects of Byzantine art and culture, from its origins in late antiquity (3rd-4th c. A. D.) to the Fall of Constantinople (1453), as well as surviving aspects of the former culture in the time after the Fall until the 19th century. Frescoes, mosaics, icons, marble architectural members, integrally detached frescoed early Christian burials, valuable ecclesiastic utensils, objects of personal ornament, but also humble functional objects of everyday use present aspects of life in Byzantium, from the organization of religious and social life to the artistic and intellectual production and the private life and activities in the market, the countryside and the sea.

The exhibits are displayed not merely as works of art, but as witnesses to the culture that created them and the society that used them, within an informational framework of information about their original context and function.

Artists:

• Dionisis Kavallieratos
  Born (1979) in Athens. He lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts in 2002 and completed the Radar Project residency in Venice and Krakow in 2003-2004. Kavallieratos’ versatile practice includes large and small-scale sculpture in wood, ceramics and mixed media, and pencil and charcoal drawings. His work...
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• Katariina Lillqvist
  Born in 1963 in Tampere, Finland. She studied film directory and has participated in exhibitions such as the Anifest-International Festival of Animated Films (Teplice, Czech Republic, 2011) and In Praise of Shadows , Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, 2008, Istanbul Modern, Turkey, 2009 and the Benaki Museum, Athens, 2009)....
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• Katerina Athanasopoulou
  Born in Athens in 1974 and currently lives in London, England. She studied painting at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and then completed an MA on animation at the Royal College of Art in London. Her short films, screened at international film festivals and galleries, are a hybrid of live action and...
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• Olaf Nicolai
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  Born (1962) in Haale/Saale, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin. He studied German Literature and Philology in Leipzig (Germany), Budapest (Hungary) and Vienna (Austria). In 1992 he completed his PhD on "The Vienna Group" (‘Die Wiener Gruppe"). Olaf Nicolai’s work is conceptual in nature and often characterized by (socio) political...
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