From March 17th to November 11th 2018 the exhibition
Byzantium & the West - A Millenium Forgotten, planned by Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz, will take place at the
Renaissance Castle Schallaburg in Lower Austria. Following
Byzanz – Pracht und Alltag (Kunsthalle Bonn 2010) and
Das Goldene Byzanz und der Orient (Schallaburg 2012), with the current exhibition, the RGZM is for the first time dedicating itself to the changeable relations between the latin west and the greek-byzantine east, presented on a large scale (about 500 objects on 1300 square metres of exhibition space).
The topic is spanning the whole Mediterranean and is insofar highly up to date, as the project is to remind of the historic dimension of the Mediterranean space as a room of communication between continents and cultures.
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Byzantine ivory panels found a new use in the West as decoration for book covers
[Credit: Domkapitel Aachen/Pit Siebigs] |
The exhibition basically focusses on the question, how do people deal with an unfamiliar or foreign culture now and then – with its ideas, its habits and material products? At what point does acquirement or refusal happen?
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Byzantine masters artistically decorated the churches of Venice with mosaics
[Credit: RMN-Grand Palais Louvre Museum/Martine Beck-Coppola] |
Which criteria are respect and appreciation depending on? To what extent are they influenced by the ruling powers? What is being copied, what is subject to change? Via which media or objects does the transfer take place? These questions will be dealt with by different case studies in about fourteen subject areas, spanning the 5th to 15th centuries and considering reception history as well.
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Comb with personification of the metropolises Rome
and Constantinople [Credit: Benaki Museum] |
To dignify Byzantium’s role for Europe’s cultural heritage more strongly, the RGZM, the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and other cooperation partners founded Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Mainz and initialized a range of projects, whose results will directly be incorporated in the exhibition plans.
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Western burial finds bear witness to the achievements of Germanic princes in the Byzantine army
[Credit: GDKE, Landesmuseum Mainz/U. Rudischer] |
Also, the processes of research itself will be visualized. The exhibition leaves beaten tracks with this immediate connection between research and mediation, by what the publicity should be given an understanding of the works of historic cultural studies.
In addition to an exhibition catalogue, scientific companion volumes will be published in the publication series of Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Mainz.
Source: Der Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Mainz [March 16, 2018]
