The return of the gods - Berlin's hidden Olympus

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Athena with the cruciate ligament aegis in the Berlin exhibition

Under the title The Return of the Gods - Berlin's Hidden Olympus , a large special exhibition was held in the Pergamon Museum Berlin between 2008 and 2010 . Previously she was in 2006 under the title Deuses Gregos. Coleção do Museu Pergamon de Berlim can be seen in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro . It was the largest special exhibition that has ever been carried out with the holdings of the Berlin Collection of Antiquities .

Organization and implementation of the exhibition

An actor in the disguise of a papposilene in the Berlin exhibition

On September 2, 2004, a cooperation agreement was signed between the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP). The exhibition was to be largely made up of holdings from the magazines in the collection and only selectively supplemented with items from the permanent exhibition. The FAAP covered the costs for the two curators - Maria Cristina Ribeiro dos Santos and Ana Carolina Cunha Boaventura - and above all for the restoration of the exhibits. This was the first time that many artefacts from Greek and Roman antiquity were made accessible since the war-related storage in 1939, and in many cases they were in a poor state of conservation until they were restored. This work was carried out in close cooperation with the management and restorers of the Antikensammlung in Berlin. The exhibition was organized by the German archaeologist Dagmar Grassinger and the Brazilian cultural anthropologist Tiago de Oliveira Pinto . In the end, 190 works of art were shipped to Brazil. In the 300-year history of the Berlin Collection of Antiquities, it was the most elaborate campaign of its kind. Never before have so many antiques been loaned out and shown outside of Berlin. The exhibition was the first presentation of the Berlin Collection of Antiquities in Latin America . At the same time, the Brazilians rarely had contact with ancient culture; there is no systematic collection of the material legacies of ancient times in all of South America.

The exhibition was held at the Museu de Arte Brasileira in São Paulo from August 20 to November 26, 2006 under the title “Deuses Gregos. Coleção do Museu Pergamon de Berlim ”. It was an unusually large audience success. In the 99 days of the exhibition, around 157,300 visitors came, and 34,000 schoolchildren were also guided through the exhibition by the FAAP's educational service. After the presentation in São Paulo, the exhibition was shown in a smaller form between December 2006 and April 2007 in the Museu de Arte Contemporanea in Niterói near Rio des Janeiro. Here the exhibition benefited from the museum built by Oscar Niemeyer in the form of a pantheon .

After the works of art returned from Brazil, the exhibition shown in Brazil was also made accessible to visitors to the Pergamon Museum on the upper floor of the north wing of the Pergamon Museum under the title “The Return of the Gods - Berlin's Hidden Olympus”. The original plan was to show the exhibition from November 27, 2008 to July 5, 2009. Due to its great success, however, the exhibition was extended until April 11, 2010. During this period, more than 600,000 visitors visited the presentation. The curators of the Berlin exhibition were Dagmar Grassinger and Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, the coordination was with Martin Maischberger , de Oliveira Pinto and Agnes Schwarzmaier , for the coordination of the restoration work Wolfgang Maßmann. The artistic direction lay with Günter Krüger, who was also responsible for the exhibition design. The director of the Antikensammlung, Andreas Scholl , Angelika Schöne-Denkinger , Annika Backe-Dahmen , Gertrud Platz , Heide Mommsen , Martin Maischberger, Mirko Vonderstein, Norbert Franken , Sylvia Brehme , Ursula Kästner and Volker Kästner were responsible for the scientific advice .

With the exhibition, the Antikensammlung also wanted to commemorate the return of many looted works of art by the Soviet Union in 1958. Thus the title “The Return of the Gods” relates to the return of the works of art from Brazil as well as to the return from the Soviet Union. From November 5, 2008 to June 21, 2009, a second special exhibition took place in the Pergamon Museum. " Dionysus - Metamorphosis & Ecstasy " was intended both as a stand-alone exhibition and as a supplement to the large exhibition of gods.

After the exhibition in Berlin, “The Return of the Gods” could be seen from June 13, 2010 to March 20, 2011 in the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim , and from April 16 to November 1, 2011 in the Kunsthalle in Leoben in Austria. A large part of the objects was then integrated into the newly designed permanent exhibition of the Berlin Collection of Antiquities in the Altes Museum am Lustgarten .

Concept and presentation

A smaller than life-size statue of Aphrodite of the Capitolina type in the Berlin exhibition with a view of the Aphrodite exhibition room

The focus of the exhibition is on the ancient, especially Greek, gods. On the one hand, because the stock of portraits in the collection of antiquities is particularly large and allows a homogeneous exhibition, and on the other hand, because access to the ancient world of gods seemed particularly suitable and easy for the people of Latin America who were less familiar with ancient culture. For example, the intoxicating ecstasy at the festival or the aesthetic representation of bodies are intended to be a reminder of everyday Brazilian culture, shaped by the Afro-Brazilian gods of the Orixás in the Candomblé religion. Around 190 objects were selected, including almost 100 sculptures made of marble. The slightly more than 90 other works of cabaret are mostly made of ceramics - vases and terracotta - and bronzes.

In São Paulo, a pantheon modeled on the rotunda in the Altes Museum was the starting point for the exhibition. The rotunda was decorated with statues of the Olympic gods and goddesses from different times: antique copies of Demeter von Cherchel , the head of Omphalos-Apollon , Artemis Ostia-Berlin , a statue of Asclepius , the Venus Capitolina and original creations of a statue of Poseidon , of the Triton from the roof of the Pergamon Altar , Athena with the cruciate ligament , youthful statues of Dionysus and Mercurius and a statue of Apollo Citharoedus . These statues were supplemented with vases, which show events from the life of gods and heroes in pictures. A second room was staged as a theater. Various actor masks were shown here, as well as bronzes and terracottas, which also symbolized different types of actors in ancient theater. The highlight of this room was the only surviving life-size statue of an actor disguised as a papposil . A third room was designed as a sanctuary imitating a sacred grove. The aim here was to show how the connection between man and gods was established. Part of the room had real vegetation and a water basin. In addition, dedicatory reliefs and other consecration offerings were shown. A fourth room was designed as an altar room. Similar to the presentation in Berlin, a simplified copy of the Pergamon Altar including the Telephos frieze was shown.

The construction of the exhibition in Berlin largely followed a different concept because of different rooms, only the sanctuary including the water basin, but without the vegetation, was tried to recreate. The remaining exhibits were grouped thematically and presented in successive cabinets. Usually one of these cabinets was dedicated to one or more thematically related deities. The last exhibition room showed pictures and press reports from the “excursion” of the ancient world to Brazil.

Catalog manual

Torso of a statue of Artemis in the exhibition in Berlin

For the opening of the Berlin exhibition, the Regensburger Verlag Schnell + Steiner published a 424-page, large-format catalog manual under the same name as the exhibition. It was edited by Dagmar Grassinger, Tiago de Oliveira Pinto and Andreas Scholl. Johannes Laurentius took care of the photographs for the volume . After forewords by the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Hermann Parzinger , the President of the FAAP Board Celita Procopio de Carvalho , the General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Michael Eissenhauer and the Ambassador of Brazil to Germany, Luiz Filipe de Seixas Corréa , the actual catalog begins. All objects are presented in short contributions. This presentation is integrated into a collection of in-depth essays that are thematically arranged.

Archeology and history
  • Albrecht Dihle : The ancient world - basis of European literature
  • Andreas Scholl, Martin Maischberger: How did the Greek gods come to Berlin?
  • Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer : The Berlin Pantheon
The Greek gods
theatre
The sanctuary
  • Patrick Schollmeyer: The decoration of the sanctuary
  • Dagmar Grassinger: The Roman garden as a sacred grove
  • Martina Heilmeyer : The plants in the garden
Ritual and feast
  • Albrecht Dihle: The rite in the sanctuary
  • Tiago de Oliveira Pinto: Music and Mythology in Rite
  • Timo Günther : Dionysian states of emergency
The Pergamon Altar
  • Volker Kästner: Pergamon - The ancient place and its altar
  • Caterina Maderna : The Pergamon Altar and the Myth of the Gigantomachy

The catalog is completed by pictures and short texts about the exhibition in São Paulo.

literature

  • Dagmar Grassinger, Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, Andreas Scholl (eds.): Deuses gregos. Coleção do Museu Pergamon de Berlim. Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado; Museu de Arte Brasileira São Paulo 2006. ISBN 85-98864-12-9 .
  • Dagmar Grassinger, Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, Andreas Scholl (eds.): The return of the gods. Berlin's hidden Olympus , Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2008. ISBN 978-3-7954-2113-7 (book trade edition); ISBN 978-3-7954-2114-4 (museum edition).

Web links

Commons : The Return of the Gods  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ The Return of the Gods ( Memento from October 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ National Museums in Berlin: Dionysus. Metamorphosis and Ecstasy ( Memento from October 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ http://www.kunsthalle-leoben.at/kunsthalle-startseite/ (different content)