UGA will host a two-day international symposium, “Rethinking the Parthenon: Color, Materiality and Aesthetics” on Oct. 17-18.
The international symposium will bring scholars to the university to present recent research on the Parthenon, a temple built for the goddess Athena on the Acropolis of Athens between 447 and 432 B.C. The conference is open free to the public; registration is required.
Sponsored by the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the classics department, the Polychromy Network and anonymous donors, the symposium is hosted by the Georgia Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition An Archaeologist’s Eye: The Parthenon Metope Drawings of Katherine A. Schwab.
The symposium will focus on three interrelated aspects of the Parthenon: its color, its materiality and its aesthetics. New interdisciplinary research in London and on the Acropolis in Athens has uncovered remains of ancient painting on the sculptures and architecture of the Parthenon. These discoveries add new insights to old discussions of the building’s decoration.
Robin Osborne, a professor of ancient history at Cambridge University, will deliver the keynote speech, “The Parthenon as a Work of Art,” Oct. 17 at 5:30 p.m. in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium at the Georgia Museum of Art following a 5 p.m. reception.
Oct. 18 will feature lectures from 9:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. from nine scholars who will discuss new insights on the building’s colorful decoration, the diversity of the Parthenon’s construction materials and shifting theories on its fundamental aesthetics.