Idea 16 for 2025: Reconcile and Activate Other Histories

I am reflecting on stumbling upon the “Allspice” exhibition at @theacropolismuseum. Created by contemporary artist Michael Rakowitz, it encouraged me to think about reconciling, re-imagining and activating personal and #national collective #memories. This is intriguing in part because of Allspice’s location, housed temporarily down a ground-floor corridor in surprisingly spacious rooms @theacropolismuseum , itself a historical and archaeological museum engaged with preserving and restoring the legacies of the #Acropolis, the histories of ancient #Greece, but also telling a national(ist) story of Greece. 

The latter reminds of the salience of learning and recognizing Other histories in building our intercultural competence and global mindset, where histories are not ossified, but like culture, open to reinterpretation, revision, reactivation. At the Acropolis Museum, this is part communicated through symbols of successive waves of pillage and plunder of Acropolis artefacts, most famously by Lord Elgin, a story prominently told in a museum film about the #history of the Acropolis.

Yet, the notion of activating historical memory against cultural #loss was also illuminating by Allspice. Rakowitz, evoking memories of the actual spice from ancestral kitchen, connects and creates works through a visual methodology that seeks to re-member lost cultural treasures of #Iraq, also a home of #antiquities and archaeological riches that has faced destruction and plunder. This methodology assembled #archaeology, ancient #iconography against the pastiche of contemporary consumerist media in startling and arresting ways. 

Through such work, Rakowitz encourages us to recognize, reconcile and reassert with the multitude of histories and #heritages, both literally and figuratively crumbling due to war, conquest and pillage. At the same time, in the shadow of the Acropolis, it evokes something anew, akin to a veritable phoenix rising from the ashes. 

I took some pictures; but you can learn more about the exhibition @bloombergconnectshttps://guides.bloombergconnects.org/en-US/guide/neon/exhibition/a0de8564-7760-4166-bc29-441519d33490

collective #memories. This is intriguing in part because of Allspice’s location, housed temporarily down a ground-floor corridor in surprisingly spacious rooms @theacropolismuseum , itself a historical and archaeological museum engaged with preserving and restoring the legacies of the #Acropolis, the histories of ancient #Greece, but also telling a national(ist) story of Greece. 

The latter reminds of the salience of learning and recognizing Other histories in building our intercultural competence and global mindset, where histories are not ossified, but like culture, open to reinterpretation, revision, reactivation. At the Acropolis Museum, this is part communicated through symbols of successive waves of pillage and plunder of Acropolis artefacts, most famously by Lord Elgin, a story prominently told in a museum film about the #history of the Acropolis.

Yet, the notion of activating historical memory against cultural #loss was also illuminating by Allspice. Rakowitz, evoking memories of the actual spice from ancestral kitchen, connects and creates works through a visual methodology that seeks to re-member lost cultural treasures of #Iraq, also a home of #antiquities and archaeological riches that has faced destruction and plunder. This methodology assembled #archaeology, ancient #iconography against the pastiche of contemporary consumerist media in startling and arresting ways. 

Through such work, Rakowitz encourages us to recognize, reconcile and reassert with the multitude of histories and #heritages, both literally and figuratively crumbling due to war, conquest and pillage. At the same time, in the shadow of the Acropolis, it evokes something anew, akin to a veritable phoenix rising from the ashes. 

I took some pictures; but you can learn more about the exhibition @bloombergconnectshttps://guides.bloombergconnects.org/en-US/guide/neon/exhibition/a0de8564-7760-4166-bc29-441519d33490