‘Athens-Sparta’ exhibition to leave NYC for Peloponnese

Source: ekathimerini

The exhibition “Athens-Sparta: From the 8th to the 5th Centuries BC,” which was on display a few months ago at New York’s Alexander Onassis Foundation, was highly successful. Now the Greek public will also have a chance to see it, as the Central Archaeological Council (KAS) recently approved its transfer to Sparta’s Olive and Oil Museum. The exhibition will open in mid-July and run to mid-September.

The joint collaboration between the Piraeus Bank Cultural Foundation, the National Archaeological Museum and the Fifth Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities will coincide with the opening of a new hall in the museum.

The exhibition aims at exploring the cultural, political and economic history of the two most important ancient Greek city states. More than 200 works of art, including sculptures, vases, coins and much more, testify to the originality and skill of the ancient Athenians and Spartans. The items on display date from the Late Geometric period (recording the beginnings of the city state), then through the 5th-century-BC Persian Wars and go up until the end of the Peloponnesian War, in 404 BC.

A marble bust of Leonidas, a bronze sculpture of the goddess Athena, inscriptions and bronze spearheads are only some of the finds that are to go on display at the Sparta museum.

There will be works on loan from the National Archaeological Museum, the Sparta Archaeological Museum, the Acropolis Museum, the Numismatic, the Epigraphy and the Marathon museums, while items that were on display in New York on loan from museums abroad will not be shown.