Reconstructing the 1936 British School at Athens (BSA) Exhibition: A Workshop on the Study of Pre-War Archaeological Exhibitions using Archival Materials
With the growth of the museum studies discipline and the interest in archival and archaeological collections in museums and heritage organisations, the history and reception of museums and pre-World War II archaeological displays and exhibitions has become a popular topic of study. Such research has situated the exhibitions of archaeological sites around the Mediterranean within the socio-political context of their creation, and analysed the wider public reaction to such exhibitions. Archival sources and archaeological museum collections aid in reconstructing such exhibitions and learning about the historical approaches to curation and exhibition presentation.
This workshop comes out of a collaborative project between the Ashmolean Museum and the British School at Athens to digitally reconstruct the BSA’s 50th Anniversary exhibition British Archaeological Discoveries in Greece and Crete 1886 to 1936 in 1936 at Burlington House in London. This exhibition highlights the BSA as a preeminent archaeological research centre by displaying objects, drawings, photographs, and architectural plans from the excavations at Knossos, Sparta, Cyprus, Melos, Perachora, and Mycenae. The Ashmolean Museum holds the exhibition materials from Sir Arthur Evans’s ‘Minoan Room’ as well as many of the objects which were lent to the show, while the BSA holds the remainder of the material displayed in the BSA Excavations, Byzantine, and Perachora Excavation rooms, as well as photographs of the exhibition. The output of this project is a digital publication which catalogues and analyses the recently digitised exhibition collections at both the Ashmolean Museum and the BSA Archive. The first part of the workshop will introduce the digital publication and the history of the 1936 Exhibition. In the second part of the workshop, scholars with interests in pre-war archaeological exhibitions and the history of the two institutions will present their work on the topic.
Programme: To be advertised in March 2025.
Food: There is a £15 registration fee if participants want to partake in the sandwich lunch and tea/coffee breaks. The Ashmolean Café will also be open for food/drink.
