Exhibition "Chaeronea, 2 August 338 BC: A day that changed the world"
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXHIBITION
DECEMBER 14, 2023 UNTIL MARCH 31, 2024
One of the most important historical events of Greek antiquity – the battle of Chaeronea that brought Alexander the Great onto the political stage and laid the foundations for the creation of the modern world – is explored in the new exhibition ‘Chaeronea, 2 August, 338 BC: A day that changed the world’ organized by the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, in collaboration with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The exhibition, which will run from December 14, 2023 to March 31, 2024, is part of the new series of archaeological exhibitions ‘Human Histories’ and is presented at the Stathatos Mansion and the Neophytou Douka Wing, under the supervision of the Scientific Directors of the Museum Dr. Panagiotis Iossif, Professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, and Dr. Ioannis Fappas, Assistant Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
The exhibition highlights the importance the Battle of Chaeronea had in ancient times, at the transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period. The latter became an era in which Greek civilization was dominant for centuries and laid the foundations of what we call the Western world. The theme is the battle that opposed the Macedonian army of Philip II against that of the allied Greek cities of southern Greece – and in particular the Sacred Band of Thebes and the army of Athens – a conflict that for the first time brought the eighteen-year-old Alexander to the front line of history: Alexander who was soon to conquer the world with his great campaigns in Asia.
The exhibition includes 240 antiquities and historical documents, drawn from 27 Museums and Institutions from within Greece and four private collections too. Many are exhibited to the public for the first time. Also on display are two marble busts from the Chiaramonti Museum in the Vatican, while an ‘Unexpected Visitor’ of importance is Andy Warhol’s ‘Alexander the Great’ (1981) loaned from MOMus – the Museum of Contemporary Art.
