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Museums of oblivion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Yannis Hamilakis
Yannis Hamilakis*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BF, UK (Email: y.hamilakis@soton.ac.uk)
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Extract

The relationship between antiquity, archaeology and national imagination in Greece, the sacralisation of the Classical past, and the recasting of the Western Hellenism into an indigenous Hellenism have been extensively studied in the last 15 years or so (see e.g. Hamilakis 2007, 2009). In fact, Greece has proved a rich source of insights for other cases of nation-state heritage politics. The new Acropolis Museum project was bound to be shaped by the poetics of nationhood right from the start, given that its prime referent is the most sacred object of the Hellenic national imagination, the Acropolis of Athens. This site is at the same time, however, an object of veneration within the Western imagination (you only have to look at the UNESCO logo), a pilgrimage destination for millions of global tourists, with all its revenue implications, and an endlessly reproduced and modified global icon (in both senses of the word).

Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 328 , June 2011 , pp. 625 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

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