Special Event | Aegeomania: The Enduring Legacy of Ancient Greece in Modern Culture
6–7pm
£18 (£16.20 For Friends and other concessions)
[ Talk )
Buy Tickets >There has long been a fascination, sometimes to the point of obsession, with the Aegean Bronze Age. This interest is at the heart of our current exhibition season, inspired by Barbara Hepworth’s profound engagement with Greece and the Aegean. Her encounters with the landscape, light, art and ancient cultures of Greece left a lasting impression on her work, providing the starting point for an exploration of the many ways the ancient Aegean has continued to capture the modern imagination.
From the discoveries of the late 19th century to the present day, the Aegean Bronze Age has inspired artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, designers and thinkers, who have drawn on its myths, objects and imagery to create something entirely new.
In this fascinating illustrated lecture, Nicoletta Momigliano, Professor of Aegean Studies at the University of Bristol, explores the impact of the Bronze Age on modern culture, tracing its influence from the 1870s to the present.
Spanning archaeology, literature, art, music, cinema, fashion and popular culture, Aegeomania reveals how the Bronze Age has been repeatedly rediscovered, reimagined and reinvented, and asks what our fascination with this distant world can tell us about modern culture and ourselves.
Inspired by the Gallery’s season celebrating Barbara Hepworth and Greece, this lecture offers an opportunity to look beyond Hepworth’s own work and discover the much wider cultural legacy of the ancient Aegean.
Nicoletta Momigliano
Nicoletta Momigliano is Professor of Aegean Studies in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol, where she has taught since 1998. An archaeologist specialising in Aegean prehistory, particularly Minoan archaeology, she has directed and co-directed excavations and archaeological projects in Crete and Turkey.
Momigliano has published extensively on Aegean archaeology and its reception in modern culture. Her books include In Search of the Labyrinth: The Cultural Legacy of the Minoans (2020), which was longlisted for the Runciman Award, Cretomania: Desiring the Minoan Past in the Present (co-edited with A. Farnoux, 2017), and Duncan Mackenzie: A Cautious Canny Highlander and the Palace of Minos at Knossos (1999). She has also edited the Knossos Pottery Handbook (2007) and served as Editor of the Annual of the British School at Athens from 2007 to 2010.
She was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003 and received the Michael Ventris Award for Mycenaean Studies in 1991.
