On the meaning of archaeology

As a museum professional, I have never had any doubt that museums are collective memories - that they have a public role, a responsibility to their community, and a duty to exist and communicate for future generations. As well as that, they represent some of our most precious treasures. They collect and present objects and stories that provide fuel for our wildest imagination and our most vivid scientific analysis. 

Nor have I ever had second thoughts about the public domain of archaeology - and the fact that finders are not keepers.

Last week I was chatting - as one does - with a bagnino (lifeguard) on the beach in Campania, southern Italy. And in speaking about ways of life we came onto the subject of underwater finds - archaeological remains that he has dug up over the last few years while fishing. He has held onto these, which are displayed in his home, and he told me of others who sell them on to interested foreigners for a small profit. 

I was shocked and appalled. Trafficking is of course illegal! Immoral, even! By holding on to something like a Roman amphora you are depriving somebody else from enjoying it, you are keeping part of our joint heritage to yourself! Surely surely he could see that! And selling it on... well, Italy along with Greece and Bulgaria are at the head of the illegal trafficking trade of archaeological heritage. 

But he spoke to me of his wonder in holding a terracotta fragment, in tracing the writing on it, in handling the jug as his ancestor would have done - and something was niggling at me.

Paolo - we shall call him Paolo - has probably never set foot inside his local museum. Nor has his local museum ever made any attempt to lure him in. Ne'er the twain shall meet - unfortunate, but true. And if he had never gone fishing, he wouldn't really care about his past, the archaeological heritage of Campania. He wouldn't - in the sense that he would probably be ignoring museums entirely. 

Even in a region so rich in heritage that it includes the stunningly well preserved remains of Poseidonia - today called Paestum - a city founded in the 7th century BC by colonists from Sybaris in mainland Greece. 

He would never know the touchingly beautiful tomb paintings found here - one of a diver in the act of flying through the air from a man made scaffold structure, into the deep blue sea of a summer's day in Campania. A sea that our bagnino knows so well. These most lovely pieces are presented in the most uninspiring way imaginable, behind a rope. It's as if the heritage that Italian museums protect for all to enjoy is all too much for those noble institutions to actually care for - care for in the way that Paolo cares for his amphora fragment. 

Ecosustainable tourism

This is where I have been spending the last week - not specifically on this tarmac road - in the deep south of Italy, in the region of the National Park of Cilento in Campania, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. A place of blue seas, dry heat, lizards and cicadas, olive groves, rosemary thickets,  fresh figs and the world's primary producer of mozzarella di bufala. 

The resort is very pleasant but it borders onto another, and this is the road that divides the two. 

On the one side, the macchia meditarranea - a natural vegetation of centennial olive trees, fichi d'India (in the name a clue - these are prickly pears), cacti, carob bean trees, pitosphorus, rosemary - sturdy thickets and bushes and plants that require next to little water. 

On the other, the following. 

Freshly mowed lawn - LAWN??? With a swimming pool. A swimming pool?? With the warm sea just a stone's throw away? 

Fresh water fountains spilling onto the grass. Irrigation systems providing tourists with the feeling they are in luscious vegetation... as green as a Wimbledon court. And...

...brick and glass structures - in this climate, the only way to keep your brain from frying in one of these is to have enough aircon to cool the entire regione of Campania. The traditional way, the sustainable way, the environmentally friendly way, of keeping cool in these climates is to slow down and ventilate using the land's own thermal currents. That, and sleeping in the heat of the afternoon - it will be 39 degrees Celsius tomorrow. The resort I am staying in ventilates its communal areas such as restaurants etc with the use of ancient things (called open windows) that create a breeze within the spaces. 

Olive trees all around provide a speckled but dense shade and the most wonderful smell. 

Happy holidays everyone. 

BP Summer Big Screens

Picnics in this country are an art form, no less. The Brits will contentedly bring along their picnics - sometimes improvised at the supermarket - and sit on (gradually dampening) grass, each on a tiny spot of about 50cm2 for the duration of an opera that lasts about 3 and a half hours.

 

Tuesday evening The Royal Opera’s live performance of Verdi’s La Traviata was played on big screens across the UK - I was watching, equipped with food, wine and friends from the park in Canary Wharf. The temptation to raise glasses at the chorus Libiamo libiamo ne’ lieti calici, which reminded me of my dad’s singing, was too much to resist. Let us drink, let us toast with these happy flutes.

 

The story of La Traviata (the fallen woman) is one of partying, decadence, love and prostitution, jealousy, parental control, money, sickness and death. A 19th century bestseller, page turner and musical triumph (although at its first performance in Venice in 1853 the public hated it). Thank you to one of my friends who actually shed some tears at the finale - opera still tugs at our heartstrings in the 21st century.

The Jeff Koons Craze

Yesterday evening I was invited to attend the opening of the Jeff Koons: 
Popeye Series exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. The queues stretched around the block – which happens to be the entirety of one side of Kensington Gardens. And this was for the pulsed entry VIP visit, which I was luckily on time for. Inside the white gallery spaces, I could not believe the number of people – and these were not ordinary people! High flying artiste types, great American collectors (or so I was told) the fashionistas of the art world, lots of them young and beautiful. It struck me that for a world that presumes to commentate on the state of society, in some ways it is truly conventional.

Truth be told, I enjoyed myself - watching people people watch, drinking champagne, being obnoxious and over the top. It is a truism that you have to be part of that world to be part of it.

The art itself is quite surprising. Once you get over the thrill of the vibrant colours of the swimming pool inflatables and the Grosfillex chairs, the provocation of the vivid plastics (which are actually made of polychromed aluminium), the sexuality of the pin up airbrushed porn models, the superficial sense of banal fun – I found it deeply disturbing. In truly postmodern sense, the more garish it is, the more unsettling.

Take the 2D work Elvis - an oil on canvas depicting the same blonde female nude in two provocative poses. It resembles a diptych, with the famous lobster in the foreground between the two bodies. It is an attractive image, uneasily turning you into a voyeur, making you respond to the sexual come on (picture on http://www.jeffkoons.com search under Popeye and Elvis). And the more you look, the more you see. Very few words in the illustration-style grey and yellow background appear as you stare: Dance of Death.

I think this was the highlight of the evening – and the single thing that told me I needed to leave.