Noemata Exhibition

Terms to describe emotions or concepts are prevalent in our daily lives as we attempt to express them through words. But what form would they take if we were to physically represent them? How would Love and Desire, Dream and Death, Envy and Evil, Justice and Injustice, but also natural elements or institutions be personified?

This is precisely the question this exhibition addresses. Personified concepts and meanings in human or animal form, as well as allegorical stories, are all placed together and become visible in the Acropolis Museum’s exposition titled ‘Meanings’, Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today.
Bringing together artworks, such as statues, vases, coins, jewelry and paintings of various materials and colors, ‘Meanings’ unites Antiquity with Byzantium, Renaissance and Modern Art to form a unique Tetralogy. Here the Greek word noima (meaning) becomes a nima (thread), highlighting how the concept of anthropocentrism, of interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences, which originated in antiquity, subsequently traverses later periods up to the present day.

This timeless exhibition features stunning works of art from a series of renowned museums around the world. For example, visitors will be able to admire the painting of Rubens from the Museo del Prado (Madrid) that shows Cronos devouring his children, the bronze statuette of Hypnos (Sleep) from the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), the famous Nike Sandalbinder from the Acropolis Museum, a vase by the Meidias Painter from the British Museum, the mosaics of Sea and Ocean from the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, and the sculpture of Eros and Psyche from the Musei Capitolini (Rome) alongside the Seasons of Yannis Tsarouchis (from a private collection) and the Allegory of Slander by Botticelli among others.

The displays are organized into six thematic sections: Time, Nature, Deities, Mankind and Human Nature, Institutions, and Allegories. Each of these has one or more subsections, depending on the number of works collected. The grand finale, which stands for the multifaceted nature of humanity, is the bronze Chimera from the Archaeological Museum of Florence.

Guided tours in both Greek and English are offered by the Museum Archaeologists!