The New Museum of Acropolis in Athens - Essay Example

of the of the Concerned 27 December The New Museum of Acropolis in Athens- A Step towards the Democratization of the Discourses Related to Culture In a pan-European context, the role of cultural spaces and heritage as allocators of inclusion and their relevance to the social sustainability and cohesion is something that needs to be pragmatically incorporated in all viable repositories of art and culture (Dicks 2003, p. 159). Considering the dynamics of globalization and the consequent melting pot effect leading to a confluence of varied races, ethnicities, gender affiliations, nationalities, age groups, social strata and ideological mindsets, the contemporary museums simply cannot affiliate to the archaic and elitist notions of showcasing, approaching, interpreting and consuming heritage. Thereby, it would not be wrong to say that the new Museum of Acropolis in Athens is indeed a viable and commendable step towards facilitating a democratization of discourses associated with heritage and culture. The Greek civilization being a source of much of Western philosophical, architectural, social and political influences, for any modern public space housing the artefacts related to Greek civilization, it stands to be a challenge to strive for a framework and ambience that circumnavigates the predominantly West-centric vantage points of interpreting them, so as to allow for a diversity friendly and democratic mode of perceiving and relating to them (Shaw 2003, p. 64). Luckily, the New Museum of Acropolis in Athens has managed to achieve this difficult feat. The museum does come out as a cultural space, which allows the individuals and groups associated with diverse affiliations to connect to and associate with the culture in a customized format and to relate to the artefacts and history in a more personal and intimate sense. Thereby, it would not be wrong to say that all the varied aspects of the new Museum of Acropolis in Athens, be it the architecture, the arrangement and display of art and history, the contrivance of real and virtual activities and spaces related to it or the configuration of tools required to enhance individual understanding, all of them do evince a predilection for encouraging a participatory culture. It is indeed true that of all the aspects related to a cultural space, its architecture happens to be a salient influence that innately and tacitly conveys much as to the kind of individuals and groups who could feel at home in it (Littler & Naidoo 2005, p. 104). In that sense the New Museum of Acropolis in Athens does shatter many conventional, elitist, and anachronistic expectations when it comes to its architecture. Subjectively considered many individuals do find many comparable European cultural spaces, like the British Museum or the Louvre Museum to ooze out a kind of cultural mindset and approach towards relating to culture that is highly Euro-centric and excluding (Sandell 2002, p, 56). The good thing is that the New Museum of Acropolis comes down on all such stereotypes so far as its architecture is concerned (Hamilakis 2011, p. 627). The architecture of the New Museum of Acropolis comes out as being refreshingly modern and urban. It does not strictly adhere to any architectural theme or style, which could be traced to any specific landmass, ideology, school of art, nationality or culture. The architecture of the Museum right from its fundamental framework to the subordinate details like glass panels, steel handrails, concrete and steel superstructure, frosted glass panels, and the larger glass facade does contrive a cosmopolitan and inclusive ambience (James 2012, p. 236). The larger architecture and arrangement of the Museum do intend to give way to a temporal and psychological space in which people of all affiliations and origins do feel welcome and at home. The same cannot be said of many other reputed European museums, which by their very architecture and ambience do influence and psychologically press the visitors to interpret, perceive and understand the art and history they house in a very regimented, narrow and set manner (Belfiore & Bennett 2008, p. 18). In that way, the New Museum of Acropolis at Athens does come out as a public and cultural space, more open to an international and diverse audience. The open, interactive and spacious format in which the Museum presents its art and history does evince an inclination to not to present art and history as an ossified and frozen experience, but rather making art a direct and personal experience, and considering the communities to be vital entities the recreate and co-create art and history. To put it in more concise and clear words, if one need to say something very basic and fundamental about the larger architecture of the New Museum of Acropolis in Athens, it would be that this ‘this public space has been quintessentially designed to encourage participation across nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, age groups, gender orientations, social strata and ideologies.’ The overall architecture of the Museum is very open, malleable, fluid, flexible, and pliable, scarcely evincing allegiance to any set school of art, historical criticism, ideological interpretation or nationalistic preferences. May seem materialistic, but museums do also happen to be public institutions subject to constraints of budget and financial viability (Fopp 1997, p. 121). Thereby, the way a museum packages its art and history has a lot to do with the objective of enhancing inclusion and participation and augmenting the eventual footfall there (Fopp 1007, p. 121). Hence, the way the New Museum of Acropolis packages and presents its exhibits, it does convey a calculated strategy to facilitate a thoroughly designed experience that not only helps the diverse audience interact with the exhibits in varied contexts, but also brings out varied deep contexts out of the hearts and minds of the visitors. One does need to make a mention and analysis of the main entrance and the lobby of the New Museum of Acropolis to validate this point. At both the main entrance and the lobby, the visitors are to traverse a glass floor and a glass ramp built over the archaeological excavations at the Acropolis. This architectural ploy if on the one side makes these archaeological excavations and the museum a unified, coalesced and harmonious presentation; it on the other side divests the underlying exhibits of all the conventional, stereotypical and hackneyed contexts. As the visitors ascend the glass ramp, they witness on both the sides, the archaeological excavations from diverse periods and times, right from the days of sanctuaries to the late antiquity. As the visitors look done and around, they practically stand severed from the all the sensory, cultural and ideological contexts surrounding them and are thereby able to look at these archaeological excavations as essentially a human narrative, to which they could relate to across the constraints of nationality, gender, race, ethnicity, age and language. The amazing thing is that the way the New Museum of Acropolis in Athens has contrived to assimilate these archaeological excavations, it is indeed unique, thoughtful and unprecedented. The visitors while walking over the glass floor, rather than pondering over these archaeological sites as being the embodiments of any specific culture of civilization, are rather tacitly made to envisage them as essential parts of the collective human history and heritage (Simon 2010, p. 227). The very act of packaging these archaeological entities over the slop of Acropolis in such an ingenious and unique format exposes the visitors to a cultural experience that they had never been through at any other museum, and thereby gets them directly involved in what is being displayed and presented. It enables the visitors to traverse the bridge across time to be able to relate to an ancient civilization, without being encumbered, inhibited or discouraged by the narratives of race, nationality, cultural identity or ideology (Simon 2010, p. 227). Thereby, in a way the New Museum of Acropolis, instead of adding new layers of meaning to its exhibits and artefacts, which give way to barriers affiliated to exclusivity, rather divests them of the pre-existing layers of meanings and contexts to make them more human and inclusive. The very broad based and catholic nature of the artefact collection at the New Museum, ranging from the Bronze Age Greece, to Roman times, to the Byzantine Greece, does allow for facilitating bridges across cultures and allowing for a more democratic future of the interpretation of the narratives underlying them. Such a kaleidoscopic view of the march of time along the Acropolis Slope makes way for the stories underlying them to be rediscovered and reinvented (Edwards, Gosden & Phillips 2006, p. 269). The catholic, inclusive and pro-participatory sentiments and intentions evinced at the very entrance of the museum are enlarged, incorporated and carried on within the overall layout and planning. As the visitors approach the end of the lobby ramp, they come face to face with the Temple of Athena, again allowing for an intensely human and universal engagement, while losing nothing in terms of imminent historical and civilization details. Again the way the early classical and archaic sculptures are displayed in a scattered format in the large gallery on the second floor, one simply cannot miss the underlying intention to encourage the visitors to culturally engage with the exhibits, making space for a kind of participation that is too direct, intensely kinetic and pushes the participants to contribute their own personal content to the larger cultural narrative they envelope. This gallery comes out as being exquisitely designed to encourage people to overcome their preconceived notions regarding culture and art and to add something powerful to the larger cultural narrative (Luke 2002). Contrary to the way traditional museums package art and culture, which rely on the inherent distance between the exhibit and the visitor, this format of packaging art and culture is too direct, engaging and enveloping so to make visitors envisage themselves as the direct part and parcel of the art, culture and history surrounding them (Luke 2002, p. 52). One is really heartened to see visitors engaging in this three dimensional cultural experience, moving in a haphazard manner around the artefacts, clicking pictures, engaging in non-hierarchical dialogue with each other and expressing very personal and subjective views pertaining to the cultural environment surrounding them. Here, the exhibits instead of being lifeless, passive sculptures rather metamorphose into cultural objects which stimulate communication and conversations between people from varied walks of life brought together by a unique cultural experience (Witcomb 2003, p. 109). Thereby at the Acropolis Museum, culture ends up becoming a means of enhancing social bridging and promoting contact between a diverse clientele. The Pantheon Gallery at the top floor again betrays the overall strategy of divesting visitors of the identity associated inhibitions by immersing them in a larger than life cultural experience, presenting the marbles and the metopes exactly as they were originally placed in the Pantheon. The all around glass enclosure enclosing the visitors in a three dimensional space, catching the Parthenon cella, makes way for easily overcoming the notions of divisiveness and fear. The galleries present the history, art and culture with all the attendant awe and mesmerism, which allows people to get over their inhibitions and encourages them to have the larger conversation they ought to be having about such an awesome shared experience. The good thing is that the Museum also allows the visitors to graduate from their personal and subjective perceptions regarding the cultural experience surrounding them and to opt for a more informed, specialized and systematic understanding of it. The visitors can participate in the presentations designed around some select exhibits conducted by the designated archaeological hosts. During the select hours, any visitor can readily approach the available archaeological hosts and ask them questions regarding the exhibits they found engaging and interesting. To encourage inclusion and participation, the cultural experience formatted and planned by the New Museum of Acropolis in Athens is deductive in its scope, accommodating a diverse audience by presenting a generalized and embracing view of things, while at the same time providing the tools and means to graduate to a more informed and specialized understanding (Moore 1992, p. 232). The hallmark and the most praiseworthy inclusive aspect of the New Museum of Acropolis is that it is readily accessible by wheelchair to the people with disabilities (Sage 2013). The entrance at the north side of the Museum building has a wheel chair ramp. All the three floors of the Museum are accessible through elevators, and all these floors are step free. There is no part or aspect of the New Museum that cannot be readily approached and accessed by the people with disabilities (Sage 2013). The toilets are wheel chair friendly and all the doors there are wide enough to accommodate wheel chairs. Any individual visiting the Museum on a wheel chair does qualify for a free entry (Sage 2013). Thereby, the Museum has been so designed and all the exhibits are so arranged that they yield a hassle free experience to the people with disabilities. Moreover, the staff and the employees at the Museum do make it a point to help and assist the visitors with disabilities (Sage 2013). The one other salient way the Acropolis Museum enhances and bolsters participation is by using the available technologies to bring to life the heritage and culture it preserves. The pivotal aspect of an inclusive and participatory cultural space is not only that it accommodates new discourses, but also that it dilutes and limits the dominant and majority discourses. The New Museum of Acropolis in Athens facilitates new discourses and encourages novel ways and new approaches towards interpreting art by exploiting the multifarious imaging technologies, which not only provide the select exhibits with immense clarity and high resolution, but rather also uncovers the varied facets of these exhibits that hitherto remained invisible or hidden. Thereby, in a way the New Museum of Acropolis at Athens is alerting, broadening and democratizing the concept of museum visitation by offering specifically engineered cultural experiences. The New Museum houses a Virtual Reality Theatre at its ground floor. This theatre presents a 3D screening of the 10 minute long film ‘Acropolis in Antiquity’. The whole objective of the screening is to help the visitors experience a three dimensional recreation of the topography and the monuments of the Acropolis during varied periods of time. This allows the visitors to see the existent heritage with a whole new perspective and presents the old heritage as an entity that is live, pulsating and dynamic. The important thing is that the very interactive nature of this screening easily makes the audiences bypass the residual mental assumptions and preconceptions, to engage in a new format of narrative that is directly engaging and live. This makes the whole experience utterly democratic, participation rich and engaging for audiences of all sort and specific affiliations. This screening makes the audiences participate in an intense cultural experience as a community, where they are responsive towards and sensitive to everyone’s reactions, views and interpretations. In addition the Museum is also working on a project called CHESS or Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal Interactions or Story Telling, which aspires to present to the audiences, story centric and cohesive narratives woven around varied specific exhibits at the museum (Pujol et al. 2013). The important thing about this project is that it is highly flexible and participatory in the sense that not only it relies on ubiquitous appeal of the story telling format that transcends cultures and nations, but the details of these stories do adapt in response to the specifications of each individual visitor in real time with the aid of an array of multimedia portals and technologies (Pujol et al. 2013). Thereby, this novel approach towards customizing museum visitation if on the one side retains the integrity and sanctity of the varied historical and art associated details of each artefact, it also shows the immense flexibility of interpreting the cultural and historical relevance of that artefact in consonance with the specific background and needs of the individual visitor. No wonder, it is bound to extend to the visitors a more intimate and personal association with the art and culture being showcased by the museum. Participation and inclusion instead of being concrete concepts, rather happens to be effusive and visionary entities. For a cultural space to be utterly democratic and participatory, it is important that it incorporates the spirit of democratic inclusion in all the ways and formats it packages, presents and showcases culture. In that context, realistically speaking, the New Museum of Acropolis at Athens has managed to imbue every dimension of its architecture, its collection of artefacts and excavations, the varied formats and configurations through which it showcases art, history and culture, and the accompanying real life and virtual experiences through which it strives to engage visitors, with a high capacity for individualization and a high customization quotient. The Museum not only manages to create a cosmopolitan, open and inclusive ambience and feel, but it also extends to the visitors the opportunity to engage with culture as per their innate inclinations, background, needs and expectations. Reference List Belfiore, E & Bennett, O 2008, The Social Impact of the Arts, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Dicks, B 2003, Culture on Display, Open University Press, Maidenhead, England. Edwards, E, Gosden, C & Phillips, RB 2006, Gender, Race, Class, and Health and Material Culture, Berg, London. Fopp, MA 1997, Managing Museums and Galleries, Routledge, London. Hamilakis, Y 2011, ‘Museums of Oblivion’, Antiquity, Vol. 85, no, 328, pp. 625-629. James, N 2012, ‘In the Gallery: Priorities Today’, Antiquity, Vol. 86, no, 331, pp. 235-237. Littler, J & Naidoo, R 2005, The Politics of Heritage, Routledge, London. Luke, TW 2002, Museum Politics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA. Moore, K 1994, Museum Management, Routledge London. Pujol, L, Katifori, A, Vayanou, M, Roussou, M, Karvounis, M, Kyriakidi, M, Eleftheratou, S, & Ioannidis, Y 2013, ‘From Personalization to Adaptivity- Creating Immersive Visits through Interactive Digital Story Telling at the Acropolis Museum’, Workshop Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Environments, pp. 541-545. Sage, J 2013, New Acropolis Museum Wheel Chair Access, Sage Travelling, viewed 2 January 2015, < http://www.sagetraveling.com/New-Acropolis-Museum-Wheelchair-Access> Sandell, R 2002, Museums, Society, Inequality, Routledge, London. Shaw, WMK 2003, Possessors and Possessed, University of California Press, Berkley, CA. Simon, N 2010, The Participatory Museum, Museum 2.0, London. Witcomb, A 2003, Re-Imagining the Museum, Routledge, London. Read More