Women in Classical Greece

New exhibit at the Onassis Cultural Center in Manhattan through May 9, 2009: Worshipping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens. Who's up for a January or February field trip?

Onassis Cultural Center
645 Fifth Avenue, Suite 304
New York, NY 10022

Monday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Admission is free.
Complimentary guided tours every Tuesday and Thursday at 1:00 p.m., open to the public.
For more information, please call 212-486-4448, fax us at 212-486-4744, or email info@onassisusa.org.

Worshipping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens.
Partial description from their website: "... 155 rare and extraordinary archaeological objects in order to re-examine preconceptions about the exclusion of women from public life in ancient Athens. The story told by these objects, and experienced in the galleries, presents a more nuanced picture than is often seen, showing how women’s participation in cults and festivals contributed not only to personal fulfillment in Classical Greece but also to civic identity. ..."

Worshiping Women tells this story in three main chapters.

1. “Goddesses and Heroines” introduces the principal female deities of Athens and Attica, in whose cults and festivals women were most actively engaged: Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Demeter and her daughter Persephone. This first section also investigates the role of heroines, a special group of women believed to have lived in the distant past, who like Iphigenia became important figures of cult worship after their deaths.
   
   
2. “Women and Ritual,” explores the practice of ritual acts such as dances, libations, sacrifices, processions and festivals in which women were active in classical antiquity. Here the critical role of the priestess comes to light, specifically in her function as key-bearer for the temples of the gods.
   
   
3. “Women and the Cycle of Life,” the exhibition explores how religious rituals defined moments of transition. Because the most important transition in a girl’s life was understood to be marriage, the wedding took on great significance, with its rituals depicted on a variety of vases associated with nuptial rites and wedding banquets. Death was another occasion on which Athenian women took on major responsibilities, such as preparing the deceased for burial and tending the graves of family members.

By presenting this story in the only way it can be properly told—through artworks and the material culture of the time—this important exhibition corrects the common, bleak picture of the lives of Athenian women."

For more, see also review in 12/19/2008, New York Times, The Glory That Was Greece From a Female Perspectiveory. Weekend Arts section.