A collection of art and craft-type objects from Greece, stretching back to something like 6000 BC - clay work (pots, vases, fertility icons, etc), gold jewellery, religious silverwork, carved wood in various forms (chests, windows, representations of gods and goddesses...), colourful bridal attire, arrowheads and other weapons (my favourites - I can be a bit of a boy about these things sometimes), some rather exquisite ancient books, and later various paintings (watercolour, lithographs, oil) depicting key moments in the formation of the Greek nation and its various struggles for independence (including one of Byron).
I didn't really respond to most of it as 'art', mainly, I guess, because it's not what I'm accustomed to thinking of as art. (Besides, the the ancient Greeks didn't distinguish between 'art' and 'crafts' - something I picked up from reading Aristotle...who says that philosophy has no relevance to the real world? - so there's a double sense in which these pieces could only ever be retrospectively identified as such.) But it was interesting to wander through, looking at the artifacts, and realise how deeply these kinds of images are ingrained into our collective (western) set of cultural references - how immediately familiar it all seemed. And, of course, there's a certain 'wow' factor in realising how old some of the stuff was, and imagining that, say, 4000 years ago, someone was actually wearing these bracelets or those shoes, or trying to shoot this arrow into someone else...
So afterwards we wandered through the main collection (which I hadn't had a chance to fully suss out last time I was at the museum); one thing which wasn't there last time was a table, supplied with scraps of coloured paper and crepe, kid-safe scissors (those funny stubby ones from primary school), glue sticks, and pre-cut paper homunculi, with an invitation for passers-by to sit down and make their own Australians to velcro to a cloth board standing nearby. So naturally I sat down to create an avatar of myself - black and red horizontally-striped sweater, insouciantly wrapped blue scarf, grey stovepipe pants (black would've been better, but there wasn't enough black paper...also, I had to trim the human shape provided, to make the hips more snake-like and the legs thinner and more à la façon), a hint of black and white striped socks, and brown loafers. (Obviously this was the highlight of my visit.) By contrast, Wei - who managed two in the time that it took me to make one - came up with (1) a spiky pink-haired lesbian-looking androgyne (although admittedly the pink hair was suggested by the little girl who was sitting opposite us at the time) and (2) a rather glam Jackie O type, though looking as if she was dressed (and made up) for a 1920s-themed party. Presumably these were not avatars of hers. Anyway, they're all on display in the museum now, for the edification of the general public...
