“The Best Laid Plans… Often Go Awry”: A Tale of Two Museums
Posted: February 1, 2016 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, History of Archaeology, Modern Greek History | Tags: Ada Small Moore, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Museum, Edward Capps, Konstantinos Kourouniotis, Lesvos Museum, Mytilene, Rhys Carpenter, Richard Stillwell, W. Stuart Thomspon 7 CommentsIn the spring of 1934, the construction of two new archaeological museums was completed in Greece, both under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter) and by the same architect, W. Stuart Thompson. Thompson had designed the Gennadius Library a few years earlier. The dedication of the Corinth Museum was grand and attended by most significant officers of the Greek Government. There was no dedication for the Lesvos Museum. Of the two museums, the one in Corinth is still standing and functioning, while the other on the island of Mytilene (Lesvos) collapsed shortly after its erection. Read the rest of this entry »
“All Americans Must Be Trojans at Heart”: A Volunteer at Assos in 1881 Meets Heinrich Schliemann
Posted: August 1, 2015 Filed under: Archaeology, Archival Research, History of Archaeology, Mediterranean Studies, Philhellenism | Tags: Assos Excavations, Charles Wesley Bradley, Eliot Norton, Francis H. Bacon, Heinrich Schliemann, Mytilene 6 CommentsCurtis Runnels, Professor of Archaeology at Boston University, here contributes to The Archivist’s Notebook a story about the discovery of a personal diary of a young American who participated in the Assos excavations in 1881 and had the opportunity to meet Heinrich Schliemann. In addition to doing fieldwork and publishing extensively on Palaeolithic archaeology in Greece, Runnels is also the author of The Archaeology of Heinrich Schliemann: An Annotated Bibliographic Handlist (Archaeological Institute of America; available also as an ebook from Virgo Books).
“He was an American citizen himself—and believed that all Americans must be Trojans at heart.” The line above describes Heinrich Schliemann and comes from the personal diary of a young American who met Schliemann at Assos in 1881. Boston native Charles Wesley Bradley (1857-1884) graduated from Harvard in 1880, having studied classics and philosophy with Charles Eliot Norton, the founder of the Archaeological Institute of America and the driving force behind the first American excavations in classical lands at the site of Assos in northwestern Turkey. Read the rest of this entry »
From the Archivist's Notebook 