Open Horizons – Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections at the Melbourne Museum opens to the public on April 23.

The collaboration between the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and Museum Victoria, builds a narrative through ancient objects, photos, and text. It reveals how thousands of years of trade in objects and ideas, confluence to build communities.

Linda Sproul, director of exhibitions and audience experiences at Museums Victoria wanted more than a display, she wanted relevance, a story that draws in the past and the present.

“We wanted a narrative, to tell the story of how the Greek community of Melbourne is linked to its ancient past.

“We wanted a contemporary story and found the National Archaeological Museum as the best contemporary representation of the past; we worked closely together and came up with a multifaceted program” Ms Sproul said speaking to Neos Kosmos.

The works on display date back from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman periods and highlight the economic and cultural trade between Greece and its neighbours, across the Middle East, Ethiopia, and the Mediterranean.

Sproul focuses on the “journey Greeks have taken since ancient times” being a continual one. She points to the different nature of “colonisation” ancient Greeks had. As Plato said Greeks lived like “frogs around a pond” in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and across to Indus. She talked about how Ancient Hellenes melded with local populations and stayed there forever.

With an eye on her audience engagement role Linda Sproul was keen to link the modern Greek immigrant experience with the ancient past.

Linda Sproul, director of exhibitions and audience experiences at Museums Victoria with a kouros from the exhibition. Photo: Stavroula Lambropoulou

“We have journeys past and present and that’s where this shout-out for the Greek community for photographs of their own journeys came.

“We’ve looked after the design and the production and our colleagues at the National Archaeological Museum had the work, we built a strong narrative which includes three screens with multimedia and 100 selected community photographs.” Ms Sproul added.

The director points to the two kouroi – early ancient Greek statues of youth – one of them directly influenced by Ancient Egypt, and the other marking the watershed birth of Hellenic sculptural form.

She has a special attachment to an early Cycladic female statue, which “was repatriated from the Germans back to the Greeks”.

In a press statement issued by the Museum, the CEO Ms Lynley Crosswell was lavish in her praise of the exhibition.

“This captivating exhibition will invite visitors to explore the cross-cultural connections that contributed to the formations of Ancient Greece.”

Three National Archaeological Museum staff, Christina Avronidaki, Katerina Voutsas and Ioannis Panagakos, archaeologists, and curators, are here working with Melbourne Museum to set up the exhibition.

“It was a very strong collaboration as the exhibition is about the interconnections between cultures, it’s about economic trade, about ideas and artistic exchange,” said Ms Avronidaki.

“It is important for us” she said, “because it’s in Australia – a melting pot of cultures and the narrative connects us all.”

Curator, Ms Voutsas said, “we were unlike modern colonialists, we did not take and leave, we stayed forever, and become syncretic, like Greeks in Australia.”

Conservator, Mr Panagakos pointed to the fact that the process continues and said that thousands of Greeks left Greece during the financial crisis to settle in other lands.

“Greece lost 500,000 middle class, creative and skilled people during the crisis, many of them came here, we have many friends in Greece that have relations and friends in Australia.”

Parliamentary secretary to the premier of Victoria, Steve Dimopoulos, in front of a kouros. Photo: Stavroula Lambropoulou

The parliamentary secretary to the premier of Victoria, Steve Dimopoulos, brimmed with pride and emotion.

“I was moved when I saw Greek writing next to the English, this is a public gallery funded by the taxes of Victorians and it brings an exhibition which is so significant to our community, to respect our community, and having the description of each piece in Greek and English is just beautiful.”

The parliamentary secretary recognises the synchronicity between the ancient journeys thousands of years ago, and our journeys. He said that that link is rare, and often Ancient Greek objects stand ossified and distant to our modern reality.

“That link is strong because of what Melbourne is, we are a state of journeys and connexions from around the globe, 50 percent of Melburnians have at least one parent born overseas.

“This exhibition is exclusive to Melbourne and it’s pretty special, it’s fantastic and the premier Dan Andrews went to Greece in December 2017, and he initiated the conversation which led to this,” Mr Dimopoulos says. He also praised the former minister for health, Ms Jenny Mikakos for being instrumental in making this exhibition a reality.

Open Horizons – Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections which opens on April 23, is an exhibition that shows that the journeys of Ancient Hellenes continue in modern times.