Benaki Museum. Publications 1935-2009: book launch

Abstract

On 1st December 2009 a book launch was held for the first collected catalogue of Benaki Museum publications in the bookshop of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation in Thessaloniki. The four speakers who took part in this event each commented on the books related to their own particular area of expertise. Antonis Kotidis, Professor of History of Art at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, began the proceedings, concentrating on the Museum’s contribution to art in throughout its career from the earliest catalogues of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art up to the recent works dedicated to the artists of the so-called Generation of the Thirties and the publications on architecture which accompanied the corresponding exhibitions. The next speaker was Charalambos Bakirtzis, Emeritus Ephor of Byzantine Antiquities, who gave a detailed appraisal of publications on the subject of the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine world: catalogues of col­lections, monographs, exhibition catalogues, festschrifts, printed material for educational programmes. Theodosia Stefanidou-Tiveriou, Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, stressed the merits of the publications on the subject of Greco-Roman antiquity which include, inter alia, catalogues of temporary exhibitions and the Museum’s collections, proceedings of conferences of archaeological interest and those volumes of the Journal in which articles have been published about objects from the Museum’s Prehistoric, Ancient Greek and Roman collections. Herakles Papaοoannou, Curator of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, closed the proceedings focusing on the Museum’s photographic publications. The majority of these publications are albums which have accompanied corresponding important exhibitions, volumes dedicated to famous Greek or foreign photographers and surveys of particular historical periods through photographic documents.