Inauguration of the temporary exhibition
“The countless aspects of Beauty”
at the Museum of Marble Crafts, on Tinos
Tuesday 26th June 2018, at 7:30pm

“The countless aspects of Beauty”, the grand exhibition presented as of the 26th May 2018 at the National Archaeological Museum (NAM) in the premises reserved to its temporary displays, served as a trigger to design a small, identically-titled version comprising antiquities from Greece’s leading museum in collaboration with the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP), which has been travelling to thematic museums run by it. The itinerant exhibition started off in Sparta at the Museum of the Olive and Greek Olive Oil and then moved to the Silversmithing Museum, in Ioánnina and, so far, has attracted the interest of 22,000 visitors in these two institutions.

On Tuesday 26th June at 7:30pm the exhibition will be inaugurated at the Museum of Marble Crafts in the village of Pýrgos, on Tinos, which constitutes its third and last staging post for 2018.

The itinerant exhibition “The countless aspects of Beauty” is part of the National Archaeological Museum’s exhibition policy of creating parallel versions, with a thematic relevance to its central temporary exhibitions, so that its collections might radiate both throughout and outside of Greece.

The exhibition records mankind’s continuous attempt, through the ages, to seek out Beauty and incorporate it into daily life, capturing it in artworks, personal toilet articles and utensils of an everyday use. Forty ancient artefacts have been selected from among the collections of Greece’s leading museum dating from Prehistoric through to Roman times, many of which are being displayed for the very first time, and which act as short commentaries-references about certain of the aspects of Beauty. The criterion of their selection was based on the thematic focus of each of the PIOP museums where they are being displayed. Thus, at the Museum of the Olive and Greek Olive Oil the emphasis was on caring for the body with oils and perfumes, at the Silversmithing Museum the protagonists were finely-crafted pieces of jewellery, while at the Museum of Marble Crafts the centre stage is held by marble works representative of the Cycladic civilisation.

Bronze folding mirror from Corinth (330-320 BC)
© NAM/FAP. Photo S. Mavrommátis.

At the exhibition on Tinos, a special place has been reserved for the module with the Cycladic statuettes, the source of inspiration of eminent contemporary artists. Their great majority portray nude female figures, with folded arms and slightly flexed knees. Visitors will have the opportunity to admire the large figurine of a pregnant woman, as well as a violin-shaped statuette, a precursor of the Cycladic figurines with folded arms.

A comprehensible way to approach and reconstitute the statuettes’ creation is through experimental archaeology. In the exhibition on “The countless aspects of Beauty” at the Museum of Marble Crafts, visitors will have the opportunity to understand the manner and the stages of their making, as a result of an experiment initiated in 2013 in the context of a research programme at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

In the exhibition at the Museum of Marble Crafts, visitors can also admire marble utensils, such as a vial and a conical cup, which are striking in the simplicity of their form and the perfection of their shape, as well as a collared jar-kantíla, called thus in Greek because it is reminiscent of the kantíla (vigil lamps) in churches.

Red-figure olpḗ (wine jug) from Módi Lokrídas in Central Greece (circa 440 BC),
© NAM/FAP. Photo S. Mavrommátis.

The ultimate goal of the collaboration between NAM and PIOP is for these exhibitions to function in the Greek provinces as “satellites” of the country’s most important museum, offering local societies the possibility to enjoy milestone works of Ancient Greek civilisation from the National Archaeological Museum’s unique collections. Yet another objective of this important collaboration is that of coupling the modern cultural reserve to that of the past, as an indication of the timeless aspect of Greek civilisation in all its manifestations.

The itinerant exhibition “The innumerable facets of Beauty” is part of
the activities marking the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018.

The exhibition runs from: the 27th June through to the 31st August 2018
Extension until 30/9/2018
Opening hours: daily, except Tuesdays, 10am-6pm
Closed on: 15th August

Museum of Marble Crafts
Pýrgos, GR-842 01 Pánormos Tínou
T: (+30) 22830 31290 | www.piop.gr
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