- Good evening.
My name is Katharine Raff,
and I'm the assistant
curator of ancient art
in the Department of
Ancient and Byzantine Art
at the Art Institute of Chicago.
I would like to welcome you
at the museum this evening
as we commence the seventh iteration
of the Louise Smith Bross Lectures.
As many of you undoubtedly know,
the Louise Smith Bross lectureship
was endowed by a generous gift
from the Bross Family Foundation,
and is sponsored by the
Department of Art History
at the University of Chicago.
The lectureship, wwhich is
held in a triennial basis,
serves as an enduring memorial
to Louise Smith Bross,
who received her PhD in
the department in 1994,
Louise was passionately devoted to
the study and appreciation
of the visual arts,
as also reflected in her
extraordinary engagement
with the Art Institute,
serving as a volunteer in the
Decorative Arts Department,
a member of the Women's Board
and the Antiquarian Society,
and a founder of the Auxiliary Board
and the Old Masters Society.
One very important
aspect of the lectureship
is the way in which it brings together
the two institutions in which
Louise was so deeply involved.
It is therefore appropriate
that the first lecture in the series
is hosted here at the Art Institute,
highlighting the collegiality
and the increasingly
collaborative relationship
between the museum and
the University of Chicago.
I would now like to turn the introduction
over to Professor Richard Neer,
the William B. Ogden
Distinguished Service Professor
of Art History, Cinema and
Media Studies and the College
at the University of Chicago,
who will be introducing our
speaker for this series.
Please join me in welcoming Richard Neer.
(audience applauding)
- Well, thank you so much,
and thank you all for coming.
It's a real pleasure to be here
at the latest iteration
of the the Bross Lectures,
and to see familiar faces
from Brosses gone by.
It is one of the loveliest
traditions, I think,
that we have here in the city,
bringing together our
two great institutions .
I'm just gonna begin with some very brief
vital statistics about Professor Gaifman.
Milette Gaifman took her BA
in art history and classics
from Hebrew University
in Jerusalem in 1997.
She then moved on to the
Department of Art and Archaeology
at Princeton where she took an
MA in 2001 and a PhD in 2005.
After a stint teaching at Corpus
Christi College in Oxford,
and Corpus is, I should add,
one of the really important places
for studying classical art in the UK,
she was snapped up by Yale,
where she's taught in both
the Department of Art History
and the Department of Classics since 2005.
She's been promoted several times
in Yale's somewhat idiosyncratic system,
and is now what's called an
associate professor with tenure,
which is basically the
equivalent of a full professor
at Harvard, Chicago, or any
other place for that matter.
(audience laughing)
Professor Gaifman is the
author of two monographs,
Aniconism in Greek Antiquity,
which cane out from Oxford in 2012,
and last year's The Art of
Libation in Classical Athens
from Yale University Press.
Both books straddle classical archaeology,
the history of art, and
the history of religion.
And both are interested as much
in the how as in the
what of representation,
form, if you will, as much as content.
Now, aniconism is a fancy term for images
that don't look to us like images at all.
In Ancient Greece, for example,
deities could be worshiped
in the form of a rock or a column
or even, in extraordinary
cases, an empty space.
The Greeks could use one and the same term
to describe a statue, a plank
of wood or a slab of stone.
So what does it do, Gaifman asks,
to our concept of a
statue or a divine image
when we recognize that these
symbolic representations
were not an early or
primitive phase of Greek art,
but a continuous option
throughout the entire
span of Greek antiquity.
Were their gods anthropomorphic?
Was Greek art really
obsessed with the body?
Well, yes and no.
After Gaifman, Greek art is much weirder
than we believed hitherto.
And our basic categories come
to seem much more fragile
and in a way more interesting
than anyone had ever suspected.
Her second book on libations
carries forward this project
but with a wholly new set of artifacts.
Libation is where you pour
out liquid, usually alcohol,
as a sort of sacrifice.
And here Gaifman is
interested in both the ritual
and the objects that
you use to perform it.
She makes her stance crystal clear
in charting three paths of inquiry,
that of empirical reconstruction
of ancient rituals,
of iconography, that is
studying the system of imagery
of these sorts of rituals
without reference, really,
to what might or might not
actually have occurred,
and then that of what
she calls interactivity,
or what it was like to use
and look at a libation vessel.
Religion in this work becomes,
sort of it provides a kind
of concrete vocabulary
in which to approach ancient aesthetics.
Conversely, the history
of interactivity is,
in Gaifman's hands,
the history of religion
pursued by other means.
In essence she shows how looking
at pictures and using tools
could be forms of religious
practice in antiquity,
and in so doing unsettles our encounters
with artworks and artifacts alike.
The result is a gem of a book
that should change the way
many scholars and students
look at ancient art.
But in addition to producing
exceptional research
under her own name,
Professor Gaifman is also an
unusually generous scholar,
an ideal citizen of her field,
or should I say fields, plural.
This generosity is apparent in her role as
the driving force behind
a number of edited volumes
and special issues of scholarly journals.
A special issue is where
a journal gives somebody
basically the keys to the car, as it were,
and that person takes over for one issue,
usually to assemble a group of people
to address a particular theme or topic
that seems to be particularly
important to current research.
It's a kind of work in which the building
of a network, of a community,
is just as important as ones
own personal contribution,
which is to say that
it's a leadership role.
And in Professor Gaifman's case she's done
a special issue of the journal
Religion on sacred images,
and a special issue of
the journal Art History
on the relationship between
art objects and bodies.
And she's also co-editing a
major four-volume reference work
on primary sources and
documents in classical art.
On a personal note, I vividly remember
my first meeting with Professor Gaifman.
It was before she was Professor Gaifman.
It was in the spring of 2005
following a lecture I'd presented
at New College in Oxford.
The topic had been classical sculpture,
and the Q and A session
had been smooth sailing
and I was feeling pretty
chuffed after the talk.
So I was taken a bit by
surprise when at the reception
this person began politely
but relentlessly pressing me
on some of my basic assertions.
I can still remember the sort
of half-smile on her face
as she basically started
playing Jenga with my argument,
you know, like pulling out the foundations
to see how much she could remove
until the whole thing just collapsed.
(audience laughs)
Now, the usual tactic amongst
classical archeologists
is to try to poke holes
in a speaker's facts
or knowledge of the corpus.
It's a sort of joust or duel
of competitive pedantry.
But this person was asking
conceptual questions
rooted in a thorough
acqauintance with archeological,
philological and
art-historical literature.
There wasn't a trace of malice in it.
On the contrary, it was a lot
of fun, if a bit unnerving.
(audience laughs)
But I learned two things that evening.
First, that Milette Gaifman was
and is really, really smart,
indeed, one of the most thoughtful
and incisive Hellenists of her generation.
Second, that she really likes to argue,
but for the very best
reasons in the world,
which is because she's an intellectual.
In the 13 years that have transpired
since that night on Oxford,
those two points have been confirmed
and reconfirmed for me
over and over again.
And I'm sure they'll be
reconfirmed yet again
for you to see for
yourselves in these lectures
that honor yet another
smart, incisive scholar,
Louise Smith Bross.
Please join me in
welcoming Milette Gaifman
as she discusses how to
view a Dionysiac monument.
(audience applauding)
- Oh wow. (laughs)
You should hear my heart, it's too much,
as I would say, as
Gaifman would say, yeah,
and she would argue
with herself about that.
Thank you, thank you, thank
you to everyone who's here.
Lots of friends, lots of faces
from different stages of my life.
Thank you first of all to the
Department of Art History,
to Alyssa and Evan, I haven't seen you
but I know you've been taking care of me
and I really appreciate it.
Thank you to Christine Mehring,
the chair of the department,
to Richard Neer, who gave me this,
the most generous introduction
I could ever hope for.
And thank you to the Bross
family from hosting this event.
It's truly a pleasure,
and I hope you will also get something
out of these lectures,
or whichever lecture you end up attending.
So really, huge thanks.
And this event, actually,
I'm not a person from Chicago
but it gave me the opportunity
to enjoy the city a little bit.
It's the prime place for
the American skyscraper.
Among the city's numerous
architectural landmarks
there's one in particularly,
it struck a chord with me.
Located at 360 Michigan Avenue,
a couple of blocks north
from where we are sitting
this evening at the Art Institute,
this is the LondonHouse Hotel.
Originally named the London
Guarantee & Accident Building,
it's seen in this inscription
restored in recent renovation works.
It is one of the big
four 1920s skyscrapers
surrounding the Michigan Avenue Bridge.
It's seen here in this historic,
I've got the wrong one,
picture of the Chicago fog.
Here is the London Guarantee
house, the Wrigley Building,
the 333 Michigan Avenue
and the Tribune Tower.
The London Guarantee Building was designed
by Alfred S. Alschuler
and completed in 1923.
Alschuler was a Chicagoan, was
even briefly a student here
at the school of art, the institute.
He was invited to design a building
that would be in dialogue
with the Wrigley Building
that was being built then,
as a next step in what would become
the central urban space of the city.
Over the years Alschuler's
creation served various purposes,
including a well-known nightclub,
and most recently it was renovated
and transformed into a
trendy hotel, I would say.
In 2015 apropos these renovation works,
the Chicago Tribune reporter wrote
of the London Guarantee
& Accident Building
and its neighbor, 333 Michigan Avenue,
that the presence of the glitzy,
outrageously large Trump sign
which the New York developer Donald Trump,
this is 2015, yeah,
plastered on his nearby
mega-tower last year
only underscores their
regal self-assurance.
Undoubtedly the contrast
between the gaudy and
the regal is striking.
But let us pause and consider the features
that endow that old London
Guarantee & Accident Building
with that regal self-assurance.
Alschuler managed to
incorporate ancient forms
into this vibrant 1920s
American skyscraper.
Specifically, he included
numerous new classical features
into a structure whose
original corporate function
as the headquarters of
an insurance company
and sheer height of 23 stories
speaks to its modernity.
While celebrating the
history of its own locale,
with its imagery of the
old site of Fort Dearborn,
seen here, in this bronze
relief above the central door,
the building also marks numerous
references to antiquity.
The grand Corinthian columns,
right here, with these acanthus leaves,
the marker of the Corinthian column,
appear repeatedly, four here in the facade
and then eight above the fifteenth floor.
I put little arrows there for you to see.
There is also a pattern
along the roof here,
seen here on the right, which is a variant
of an ancient pattern we call the meander,
whose very long history
stretches all the way back
to the beginning of the Greek city-state,
to the age in which the Iliad
and the Odyssey were written,
were put into writing, circa 750 BCE.
On the slide you can identify that pattern
on a funerary vase from circa 750 BCE,
where you see the geometric pattern,
and the middle scene shows the
presentation of the deceased.
There are further decorations
that quote from ancient
classical visual vocabulary.
In the background, and I hope you see,
there is the building,
and there are garlands here,
it's not that very clear, I'm sorry,
but the front here is from the Ara Pacis
and it's the same garlands.
I went out to take a picture this morning
and it was too, the kind
weather wasn't with me.
But the front is from a section
from the Altar of Peace,
dedicated in Rome in 13 BCE.
In both we see garlands,
and between them there
are these skulls of oxen.
Those actually go back, of
course, to Classical Greece.
And here I'm showing you a vase
from Athens from fifth century BCE,
where we see a moment before
the sacrifice in a sanctuary.
On the left you see the garland,
and on the right above
the altar is the skull.
The same motif then recurs
through the centuries.
Such element as the
building's general proportion
speaks to Alschuler's choice in his design
to adopt for his project
the style of the Beaux-Arts
school of architecture,
which was developed in
Paris, flourished in the US,
in the late 19th and 20th century,
and was marked by the
incorporation of various elements
from ancient classical architecture,
from Greece and Rome
and other ancient sites,
as well as Renaissance architecture,
and bringing all of these
together in the modern age.
I hope that by now you can see the appeal
of this particular building
for the historian of Ancient Greek art
who always delights in the revival
of ancient visual forms in later periods.
But this neoclassical creation
with its mix of various Ancient
Greek and not Greek motifs
makes another allusion to antiquity.
The cupola at the top,
often referred to as the temple today,
as seen here both within and inside,
recalls a monument from classical Athens.
Its cylindrical form, Corinthian columns
and the two friezes that
wrap around its upper part
resemble a monument that
is still largely intact
and easily viewable
today at a lovely square
in the area known as the Plaka
near the southern slopes of the Acropolis.
This remarkable monument
from the fourth century BCE
will serve as the anchor of this series
as we explore issues of
labels, classifications
and taxonomies in the history
of Greek art and architecture.
So first we will take a close look.
What makes it so remarkable?
First, that it's preserved,
for even though it underwent
a number of restorations
and alterations over the centuries,
most, if not all, of its original elements
are still there in their original form,
even if not fully original,
even if eroded or restored.
We see here an original structure
from the age of the great
philosopher of Aristotle,
the renowned rhetorician Demosthenes.
It is of substantive dimensions,
there's three stories
high or 33 feet tall,
made of two types of marble,
one from Mount Hymettus and
marble from Mount Penteli.
It has its original roof still in place.
This is really unusual.
Furthermore, unlike so many
other ancient monuments
for which we can only hypothesize a date,
an occasion of construction
here, no guesswork is needed.
Thankfully there is an
inscription on the frieze,
something that people like me really love,
that is, if you can read it. (laughs)
But once transcribed and translated
it gives us a lot of information.
The last part names the eponymous archon,
or the official whose name
designated the year and occasion
for which the monument was erected.
Knowing who was the archon when,
what we call the archon list,
we can tell that the year is 335/4 BCE,
and we can assume, then,
that this structure was
completed shortly thereafter.
The inscription also
provides us with the occasion
for which the monument was erected.
It tells us that a certain individual,
Lysikrates, son of Lysitheides,
from one region of Athens named Kikynna,
was the choregos or the sponsor.
Then we learn that a chorus of boys
from the tribe of
Akamantis was victorious.
Now to really understand this
we need some background information.
In Athens there were
annual choral competitions
of song and dance in honor of Dionysus,
and each team had a sponsor or choregos.
In the case of Lysikrates,
in here, our case, this was Lysikrates.
Each team was also from a
specific tribe in Athens.
All the citizens were
divided into 10 tribes.
So Lysikrates funded the boys' team
from the tribe of Akamantis,
and happily they won that year.
We also learned that one Theon
was the accompanying musician,
and that the director
and teacher of the boys
was an Athenian named Lysiades.
All together, then, this monument,
which is known today in the literature
as the Choragic Monument of Lysikrates,
tells of the victory of the chorus
for the boys of the tribe of Akamantis,
sponsored by Lysikrates,
on an occasion of the
song and dance performance
in 335/4 BCE.
Other elements in our monument
also evoke the idea of triumph.
Around the circular form in
between the Corinthian capitals
we see a series of vertical elements
that usually may seem just ornamental.
But we see here are actually,
and these are these details,
carved in relief are tripods,
and they're carved around
the entire structure.
A tripod is a bowl
supported by three legs,
hence a tripod, or
literally a three-footer.
We see here, I'm showing you
an example here on the right,
in Greek antiquity tripods were
of great social significance
and had various meanings, not one,
but one major one was the fact that
they were awarded to winners
various competitions.
They were similar to
trophies in today's society.
The example here shows
a tripod from Olympia
from the site of the Olympic Games.
And in this slide we see,
in here we see many, many tripods
that were dedicated, given
to the gods in Olympia
by athletes hoping to win competitions
or thanking the gods for their success.
In Athens, on the occasion of the victory
in a choral competition
in honor of Dionysus,
the sponsor of the winning
team received a tripod.
It is fitting to see
tripods in our monument
which celebrates that kind of victory.
On this slide here, we see on the right
is an image from a vase
from the beginning of
the fifth century BCE.
And you see here the god Dionysus
holding his distinctive goblet,
and he's holding, he has the ivy branch.
He's got a beard in this case.
And next to him is a satyr.
This is one of his companions.
These are half-animals
half-men, note the tail,
and he has also pointed ears.
The satyr holds a tripod,
and we presume, then, that
the vase references somehow
the kind of a victory,
a Dionysiac victory.
But satyrs and Dionysus
also appear on our monument.
And for this we'll need
to get a little closer.
So what we have here, and
we're gonna go even further in,
and right above where the inscription is
we see something a bit,
the most eroded part,
which is obviously the
most important part.
And what you would have to make out here
is the silhouette.
So there's a reclining figure right here,
and actually this is the head,
but that's really hard to see.
But you can see that this is
the head of one of the accompanying figure
and there's one that's even bigger.
And if you don't believe me
then I will show you the plaster cast,
where you can get a better idea.
The figure is larger than all the others
and you can see the outline of the head
compared to the other one next to it.
And there is also some kind
of animal, you can guess that.
Now, this is really the worst,
the most damaged part
of the entire relief.
And here I've added to our sequence
the drawing that was made
in 1762 of this relief
to make things easier for us to read this,
and I just added some ideas of his own,
that's clear, but the details remain,
a youthful male nude figure
reclining on a fabric,
holding a bowl,
in the company of what
appears to be a panther.
That this is Dionysus is
suggested by the general context
already implied by the inscription,
the fact that he's bigger
then all the other figures,
and that is the distinction of gods,
typically, in situations like that,
and the fact, the animal
is supposed to be a panther
because that would be the natural animal
to be in the company of
the god in such a scene.
Now, on either side of the
god we also see satyrs.
So if we go here on, yeah,
so first I'm gonna go to this
part, to all the way there,
and you see a satyr next to,
so this is this scene and a satyr,
and you can identify him by the tail.
This is the original.
And you see here a mixing
bowl for wine and water.
And he's drawing it holding
a cup, a bowl, sorry.
And then on the other side of that,
so here was the main scene with
Dionysus here he was sitting
and there is a sitting, seated satyr,
and there is another
one who is drawing wine
from another krater, another
mixing bowl for wine and water.
So, so far this seems like
a very charming scene,
the god, and you're having
wine, they're reclining.
But then there are scenes
of violence, quite, yeah,
and you can start getting
an idea of that right there.
We see the satyrs chasing men,
and as they move around them
and they use these kinds of
branches, you see them taking,
they're holding the trees
and trying to get branches,
and they chase these poor men, right here.
And there is more, we see this satyr
holding the branch and chasing that man.
It's very weird, don't you think?
(audience laughs lightly)
And then there is more.
There is this detail here in the middle.
What the hell is that?
Well, there is the drawing
from the 18th century,
that's supposed to help us.
And in fact what we see here
is a dolphin with human legs.
So what the hell is going on here?
Well, this striking
relief references a story,
the first known in the sixth century BCE,
from a hymn to Dionysus.
The story tells of pirates
who tried to abduct the god.
They put him on a ship and
they put him in chains,
but the bonds just loosened.
And then the sea changed into wine.
Grapevines appeared everywhere.
The god transformed into a roaring lion,
a bear appeared on the ship.
And then the frightened pirates,
they tried to jump off this ship,
and they were turned into dolphins.
The only one who was saved
from becoming a dolphin was the helmsman,
who recognized that the abducted prisoner
was none other than the
god himself, Dionysus.
This is a powerful story
that articulates this triumph of the god
and the importance of recognizing him.
And so here we have the
reference on the relief,
and this is the most recent photograph,
and you can see the dolphin,
half-dolphin half-man.
But I can't really, there's
no way to tell the story
without showing you this
cup, it's a classic,
which is today in Munich.
And it was made right
around the time from which
we have the texts of the
Homeric, the hymn to Dionysus.
And here we see Dionysus
reclining, surrounded by dolphins.
And then actually we'll
show you photographs I took,
and I know it's bad 'cause it's
from within the glass case,
but I just want you to
see how deep this is.
And then imagine it filled with wine.
Dionysus reclining in the sea of wine,
surrounded with dolphins,
he's holding his horn of plenty
on a ship which has two little dolphins
also decorating it.
And these are not just then dolphins.
These are the pirates having
been transformed into dolphins.
On our monument the relief
cuts to the very moment
in which the pirates were
turned into dolphins,
the very instant of transition.
The cup gives us this wonderful aftermath.
Here we are in mid action.
And indeed it appears that the relief
presents a different
variant of the stories,
as we see the satyrs
chasing the pirates on land
and that the dolphin jumps into the sea,
so this is not exactly the same version.
So Lysikrates's team won a competition
of the song and dancing
where teams were, in honor
of Dionysus, were performing.
We may say then that the
imagery could be related to
the hymn that was performed.
And maybe, then, they performed
some kind of version of that story.
Whatever the case may be,
the relief evokes the same story
in the triumph of Dionysus.
So here we have a Dionysiac
victory in imagery and in text.
And you can see some more.
But then there's even more.
Let's look now at that roof
with that interesting
floral part at the top,
which was made out of
a single marble block.
And you can see here that
they detected cavities
that suggested a tripod was
originally standing there.
So we can surmise that, as
was customary at the time,
Lysikrates placed the tripod
he won on that occasion
on the top of this monument,
because this was not unusual,
that's what normally people did.
That's how sponsors of winning teams
showed, celebrated their victories.
His tripod is estimated to have been
about three meters tall or ten feet high
and was placed at the top.
Now, this is one reconstruction,
but I also am showing you two versions,
since although everyone agrees
that there was a tripod at the top,
there's no question about that,
we, of course, disagree in how precisely
that was positioned.
As you can see on the right,
the German reconstruction suggests
the additional figures,
supporting figures.
And this is the French version,
which situates the tripod directly there.
Here we also can tell that we are not,
today the monument is completely closed,
but according to Heinrich
Bauer's repulogical work,
it was likely open on one side
and may have had a statue inside,
as seen here in this reconstruction.
However we think about the original,
whether partly open or
completely closed as it is today,
we can imagine it with the
large tripod on the top.
Standing tall at a
crossroads in ancient Athens,
it asserted a victory, Dionysiac triumph.
So here we have the monument of my title,
a Dionysiac monument.
But then, what the hell was
that about the Chicago thing?
(audience laughs)
Well, of course I wanted to bring you in
to get your attention.
But yes, there's also, this
is a case of great revival
in American architecture.
You can also say that the
cupola, or the so-called temple,
of Michigan Avenue marks a
sign of Dionysiac rituals,
and celebrations at the hotel's rooftop
have placed even triumphant occasions.
There's a gather on certain evenings,
it's a true feat to manage
to get a seat there,
not to mention the marriage
proposals inside the cupola
that have become a local tradition.
But there's more to this, however.
I began with this comparison
in order to get us to think together
on the ways in which we view
monuments from the past.
Taking my prime example
is this Athenian monument,
a structure that celebrates
a choral victory.
The comparison between
our 20th century structure
and its ancient source of inspiration
exemplifies the issue of modes of viewing.
Some of you may rightly
object to this comparison.
You would say, well, there
are some similarities,
but then you may also say,
the two structures are
not really identical,
one is open, the other closed,
one is made of modern materials,
the other made from two
types of Greek marble,
one has an interesting relief
with tripods and a whole story,
the other has these wreaths
and circle of farns.
Alschuler did not really
copy this Greek monument.
Rather, he incorporated
sufficient elements
that suggest similarity.
He created a variation on a theme,
which emphasizes certain
aspects of the model or source
and does away with others.
There's a selection here.
Obviously Alschuler's
decision-making process
was guided by a range of
goals and constraints,
but the result suggests
the certainly engagement
with particular elements
from ancient Athens.
Notably, Alschuler not quoted saying
that the cupola was intended to be
in relation to the building,
the Wrigley building,
which also has Corinthian
columns at the top,
but in circular form,
but then there are other models
that were incorporated there.
So we have a whole
mishmash of things going on
in the Chicago highline.
And actually, in Chicago itself,
on the occasion of the 1893 Chicago Expo,
the 400 years for the expedition
of Christopher Columbus,
and here is one of the
photographs from that occasion,
yes, there was, among the monuments,
a full copy of the Monument of Lysikrates.
So we can assume that this was known.
Furthermore, the Monument of Lysikrates
was also described in detail
in one of the major publications
by one of the Beaux-Arts
school of architecture,
one of the teachers, a George Gremain,
in his (speaks foreign language),
published originally in French in 1904.
In this illustrated work,
intended for recent
graduates of the school,
our monument appears as exemplary
of Corinthian columns in Greek antiquity.
From the perspective
of the Beaux-Arts school of architecture,
witnessing instructional texts
and implementation in
Chicago and elsewhere,
the ancient monument is characterized
by its columns and circular form.
And although Gremain
mentions the inscription
and the occasion for which the monument
was originally erected,
he does not acknowledge
the tripods or the relief.
From his perspective our
monument, is above all else,
a classical architecture model,
an early example of the Corinthian order.
It is also a mark of some
democratic traditions of Athens,
but that's of less significance.
What is fascinating here is
the kind of selection process
whereby certain elements are highlighted
and others completely ignored.
With this instance of
American Neoclassicism, then,
I invite you to consider
with me other ways
in which the art and
architecture from the past
was viewed, described and then classified,
using the Monument of Lysikrates,
with which you are very familiar now,
as our prime example.
Here a word must be said about
the title of this series,
Classification and the
History of Greek Art.
The act of classifying is
crucial for any area of inquiry.
Inevitably we must organize and label
the subjects of our research
in the world around us.
This is almost too obviously,
especially to those who are engaged
in histories and philosophies of science.
I suspect some of you here may think of
Michel Foucault's Les Mots et les Choses,
first published in 1966,
and is in his English
translation, The Order of Things.
What Foucault highlighted from the onset,
it was the role of nomenclature,
the choice of names in the
process of scientific inquiry.
These are issues that
actually go all the way back,
of course, to ancient philosophy.
The choice of categories articulates
the ways we are of looking at the world.
In this series I would like
for us to think together
about the categories we deploy
in the study of the art of Ancient Greece,
and how they have shaped and so informed
the histories that are being written.
Today we will be conducting
some time travel,
moving from the early 20th century
to the age in which the
Monument of Lysikrates
was constructed in the fourth century BCE.
And then we will progress speedily,
very speedily, don't worry,
until the moment in which it received
its first comprehensive study in 1762.
This will be our first
step in this series,
and considered how modes
of viewing and labeling
shape perceptions of art and architecture
in particular contexts,
whether political, religious or cultural.
In the next lecture I will
discuss how the monument fits
within the categories and classifications
in the fields of Greek
art and architecture,
particularly from the
18th to the 20th century,
and thereby explore the
fundamental role of taxonomies
in shaping our scholarly inquiry.
We will consider the
advantages and limitations
of taxonomizing.
In the final lecture we'll try to consider
ways in which we can build
upon existing classifications,
and at the same time maybe
go a little bit beyond them.
So how was the Monument
of Lysikrates viewed?
Well, the first comprehensive
account of our monument,
as I said, is from 1762
in a publication by James
Stewart and Nicholas Rivett,
two British architects
who spent time in Athens
in the 18th century when
Athens was under Ottoman rule,
and where they told their readers,
and this is what you see on this screen,
that the locals call the monument
the (speaks foreign
language) of Demosthenes,
so the Lantern of Demosthenes.
But they also said that
this idea was utterly absurd
and hardly deserves any attention.
Next week on Monday we will
return to these remarks,
which speak to a profound gap
between the view of the
natives and the foreigners,
between local lore and also
those who are fascinated
and those who are coming
to provide proper empirical documentation
and give full account in the real way
of understanding the past.
So this is coming up on Monday.
But today perhaps we'll
focus on more the fun part,
the local lore and the native view,
and also the tourists' eyes,
which also shaped later
perceptions of our monument
and ultimately led to the
adoption of it in Europe
and here in the United States.
So we're going back in time to the,
here is a classic shot of
the Athenian Acropolis,
and our monument is not
described in any ancient texts.
But I wish to tell you a
little bit of what we know
about the context in which
this monument was erected.
It was one among numerous
monuments or structures
that stood around the Theater of Dionysus,
this is showing here on the slide.
There are various types, I mean,
and most of them are just small blocks,
so there's no point in,
they're not very visually interesting,
that stood around this Theater of Dionysus
where the performance took place,
and they were intended to
support bronze tripods,
the trophies that were
awarded to the sponsors.
The street where these
monuments stood was known,
at least from the second century CE,
as the Street of the Tripod,
highlighted here on the map.
And in this slide, yeah,
I'm showing you here,
there's sort of, the plan
where our monument is
seen as the circular form
and next to it all kinds of
these bases for trophies,
so it one was among many.
It's higher, but among others.
In fact, in Athens today
there's still a street known as Tripodon,
this is where my arrow
there, the blue arrow is,
and the Lysikrates monument,
marked in red here,
is on that street.
So our monument was among
other such structures.
We cannot tell what the
Athenians said about it,
but we know how it came into being.
And here we need a little bit of
Athenian cultural and political history.
So under Athenian democracy
in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE,
citizens of a certain level of income,
and that's at least three
talents, and what is,
they were expected to
contribute to the state,
and to sponsor festivals
and military expeditions.
A simpler way,
so three talents is about
26 kilos of pure silver,
the value of that and
that's hard to gauge.
So a different way of thinking about it,
there were about 300 male citizens
in Athens of the fourth century BCE
who were within the ability
to finance and make such sponsorships,
so the army and the festivals.
The estimated size of the population
was about 150,000 people
with 30,000 citizens among them,
and this is a high estimate, this is,
there was another estimate of 20.
So we are looking at the
top 1% of the citizenry
who could actually sponsor festivals.
And this is where Lysikrates was.
Now it's interesting that even
if you didn't have the money
you could be a funder or a sponsor.
In fact, Plato himself
served as a choregos of a boys' choir,
and he borrowed money
from Dion of Syracuse.
And so there was a lot of
politics involved in that.
That was an honor and a privilege.
And this was part of the
festival of the City Dionysia,
when the Athenians had their theatrical
and, quote, competitions.
This is when the famous
Greek plays were performed.
There were competitions
of so-called dithyrambs,
these are the songs in honor of Dionysus,
and tragedies and comedies.
At the time the entire population,
as I said, was divided into 10 tribes,
and the festival, then, of Dionysus
in each tribe had two teams,
the one, chorus of men, and
the other, chorus of boys.
Each one had 50 participants.
In addition, there were
other, the competitions,
of course, between the
tragedies and the comedies.
So, and the choruses
were not under sponsors
then were nominated by the tribes.
So there was all of the
inside workings here
that come across when
we think of Lysikrates,
that he had to be selected
by the people of the tribe of Akimantes.
We can also know that
he had to be above 40.
Why is that?
Because according to the law
of the fourth century BC,
a sponsor of a boys' chorus
was required to be above 40
in order to prevent him
from sexual advances.
That seems very apt if
you think that today.
Actually there were all
kinds of legislatory measures
to protect boys from
unwanted sexual advances
from their teachers.
There's a thought that after
40 it's all gone, obviously.
Once appointed, Lysikrates was paired
with a poet and with a song
and the musician Theon we
mentioned in the inscription.
The sponsorship, then, was
more than just about money.
Here, I have that, the inscription.
It was much more than just money,
it was about finding 50 competing boys,
finding rehearsal space,
selecting the teacher,
getting the costume designers,
oversee the boys' diet,
making sure that they
confirmed to choral order,
that they perform as a team.
These actually had, these
competitions for boys 11 and 17,
and imagine managing 50
boys in that age group,
were immense educational significance
for the city as a whole.
Now, given that every year
there were 500 boys competing,
10 tribes, 50 boys from each,
most Athenian men had
undergone this experience.
This was the educational
endeavor of the city.
And think about the value
of athletic and musical competitions
in today's American educational system.
There's an echo of that
here already, or precedent.
During the festival, of course,
Lysikrates would have been
among the dignitaries.
And once awarded the tripod
he then managed to secure a
nice place for his monument
to support it in this nice location.
But I still didn't answer
what they said about it.
I know what they thought
about the tribe parts.
The texts from the era
focus on the tribe parts,
which reference in the official
records as prizes of victory
in (speaks foreign language).
We can also get an idea
about their significance
from one of the speeches of
Demosthenes, the great orator,
seen here on a statue from the Roman era.
In a trial speech, either
from the 340s or the 320s,
on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff,
Demosthenes accuses the fellow citizen,
his name is Phaenippus,
for claiming to be poorer
than he actually was.
And he did that in order to avoid
making contributions to the street,
to avoid the duty known as the litreges,
or, in today's terms,
in this speech Demosthenes
was charging Phaenippus
for a kind of tax evasion, if you like.
But how could Demosthenes prove that?
How, he didn't have tax records or any...
Well, addressing Phaenippus he said,
"Your fathers were
possessed of such wealth
"that each of them set up a tripod
"in honor of choregic
victories at the Dionysia.
"And I do not begrudge them this,
"for it is a duty of the wealthy
"to render service to the state."
Having a tripod in the public square
is both a marker of wealth and status
and duty and service to all of this.
As Peter Wilson pointed
out, the principle text,
no one brags about his own riches.
The tripods are connected
to ones own heritage.
They are marked as a family wealth.
This is an inherited privilege and duty.
The wealthy were expected
to make the contribution to the state
and put their words on display.
This process glorified the individual man,
the tribe of the winning team,
the musician and the teacher,
but ultimately it celebrated
the workings of Athenian
democracy in honor of Dionysus.
This dynamic generated
the creation of various types of support,
sometimes elaborate, like
the one by Lysikrates.
We may turn to ancient vocabulary,
to the term nemata, or memorials,
that may be useful here in capturing this,
nemaia was supports role in
commemorating the moment.
We could also think of
them as honoring the god
whose hymn was sung on the
occasion in the victory,
and whose image is shown
in relief in our monument,
the Monument of Lysikrates.
We can also think of them in
terms of Athenian identities
in terms of a particularly
historic context.
The year 335/4 BCE, when
the boys of Akamites won,
was right about when Alexander
the Great gained great power.
The young man from Macedon
was soon to conquer
all of Greece, Egypt, Asia
Minor, the entire Persian Empire,
basically the entire world,
from the Greek perspective.
Athenians had already experienced
the threat from the north,
from Alexander's father,
when they, along with other city-states,
were defeated by Philip
of Macedon in 338 BCE,
after which all Greek
city-states signed a peace treaty
under the hegemony of
the Macadonian kings.
They kept their autonomy,
but soon after Philip's death in 336 BCE
the city-state of Thebes
attempted to undermine that peace treaty
and was crushed militarily
by Alexander the Great,
Philip's successor.
Still, and so the Athenians
were aware of that,
and they kept to their autonomy
and democratic institution,
including their annual festival.
In light of this, some scholars would say,
well, the Athenians were trying,
someone like Lysikrates
was trying to be regal,
showing off, in putting up
a high monument like that,
being influenced by that
Macedonian regal style.
Others see it, so you could see it also
as an Athenian self-assertion
over the power of the citizenry
to contribute to public life,
even at a grander scale.
In fact, however we view it,
we can see that this tradition
continues well after the
death of Alexander the Great.
Then two monuments, one has not survived.
This is from 320/319 BCE,
there's a Monument of Nikias,
which has not survived,
but you can see there the construction.
And here on the foot of, on
the slopes of the Acropolis,
the Monument of Thrasyllos,
and here is the reconstruction
with the tripod on the top.
Now this is a temple lookalike.
These both are reconstructions.
It's something that looks like
a temple but actually wasn't,
because it wasn't very deep,
there's not much space,
and on top of it was a tripod.
Now, remember these and keep them in mind
as I move on in time into the Roman era,
and to the travel writer Pausanias,
who write the descriptions of Greece
in the second century CE.
In this text we find the mention
of the Street of the Tripods,
still that name that you still use today.
And like the tourists in this picture,
Pausanias offers the
traveler's point of view
of Ancient Greece in an age
in which it was no longer independent,
being under Roman rule.
As Pausanias writes,
Leading from the Prytaneum,
Prytaneum is the place
where the civic officers
sat through the year, that's
the chief civic center.
So from the Prytaneum is
a road called Tripods.
The place takes its name from the shrines,
large enough to hold
the tripods of bronze,
which stand upon them,
but containing very
remarkable works of art,
including a satyr,
of which Praxiteles is said
to have been very proud.
This is actually a very
complicated passage,
but note the shift here from the text,
from what we've seen from
the fourth century BCE,
where the discourse is
on tripods themselves,
to something else.
Pausanias doesn't care who, why and how,
is it from wealth?
He focuses on the monuments themselves
and calling them (speaks
foreign language), shrines.
They are said to be large
enough to hold bronze tripods.
This description certainly
echoes the appearance
of monuments such as that of
Thrasyllos I just showed you,
and, we would say, also
the Monument of Lysikrates.
These look like temples but
they're not really temples.
There was hardly any
room to move inside them.
The Monument of Lysikrates
was high above ground level,
was not designed for regular entry.
They look like temples.
Pausanius, the way he uses
the word (speaks foreign
language) or shrine
is similar to the way
we use the term temple,
or when we talk about the
cupola at 360 Michigan Ave.
It is a temple lookalike,
not really a site to worship.
Still, in our context,
and like in our context
we, really we don't worship anything,
maybe wine, those who drink that. (laughs)
In Pausanias's day
shrines did serve worship,
they did worship Dionysus.
It's just that with the term now, as then,
associates the structure
with religious meaning,
not only the entire area
where our monument stood
was also where the processions
in honor of the god took place.
He also mentions the statues of,
a statue by the great master Praxiteles,
one of the most famous artists
of the fourth century BCE,
that he said was, and he says,
he said there were some great
artworks that were on this,
restored on these, not
only on the streets.
You only have then in the
civic, those are the tripod,
the sacred in the (speaks
foreign language).
And there's artistic coming together,
witnessed on this Athenian street
from the traveler's point of view
in the second century BCE.
The issue of religion becomes
all the more pertinent
when we turn to what appears to be
the earliest direct reference
to the Monument of Lysikrates.
That is in the 12th century CE,
the period in which Athens was
part of the Byzantine Empire
and was Christian, of course.
My dear colleague, Rob Nelson,
whom I think many of you here know,
tells me that, and this is quote,
"Byzantine Athens was pathetic.
(audience laughs gently)
"There was nothing there."
He really said it that way.
Thessaloniki was the true
center of the Byzantine world.
Well, something was there.
There were churches built,
and this is one of them,
the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea,
founded in circa 1050 CE,
and this is located today at
the edge of the same area,
the Plaka in Athens, the
same area as the monument.
In the 12th century CE, Michael Choniates,
an emerging churchman,
originally from Asia Minor,
came to Athens and was the bishop
from around 1182 to 1204 CE.
In his first address to the Athenians,
probably delivered in 1182,
Choniates pointed out to his audience
that their city's landmarks,
pointed their city's
landmarks but he told them
that it's not because of
the Acropolis or the Piraeus
that they are well reputed,
but because of their virtues and wisdom.
And he also mentioned in that context
the lamp of Demosthenes,
(speaks foreign language),
the lamp of Demosthenes.
As I mentioned earlier, Strutt and Rivet,
in the 18th century, noted
that local Athenians called
the Monument of Lysikrates
the lantern of Demosthenes.
And indeed, later writers and earlier,
refer continuously to our monument
as the lamp, the candle,
the lantern, of Demosthenes.
These long traditions of local
lore, reported by travelers,
is really perplexing.
Why a lamp or a lantern, why Demosthenes?
For a lantern or his
lamp we can think perhaps
that in the eyes of the Athenians perhaps,
especially if they thought
of the tripod at the top,
that it may have resembled a lantern,
and their form, it's also being tall.
Perhaps Demosthenes, because it was
from the fourth century BCE,
and perhaps because he
was a famous figure,
that makes sense, sort of,
but we can be a little bit more specific.
We should note that the word for lantern
most often used in these references
is the word (speaks foreign language),
which means a lighthouse.
But okay, but then in Constantinople,
that big capital of the Byzantine
Empire, today's Istanbul,
there was also a district
known as the Phanari.
And where affluent Greeks lived
there was a thriving community.
In fact, until today, Greeks
from Istanbul, from this part,
are known as the Phanariots.
I even have a colleague
who is a Phanariot,
I don't know even how to say Phanariot.
From this perspective,
if we think about it
from the Byzantine context, then,
in Athens called the Phanari
would evoke a parallel to the
great place in the capital,
an Athenian Phanari.
And they're saying that,
like Constantinople,
Athens also has, is Phanariot,
and it makes sense, the Phanaris,
those living in the Phanari
in Constantinople were Greeks.
And why Demosthenes?
Well, we could think, great,
it makes sense in general.
But perhaps the 12th century mention
of an oil lamp of Demosthenes
can help us a little further.
Anthony Caldales and others have argued
that for Byzantine churchmen,
Demosthenes in particularly represented
an ideal figure from the classical past.
He could be construed as
the model for priests.
He was the great orator
in whose footsteps Christian
preachers could follow.
In fact, the reference to an oil lamp
in the speech is also telling,
for Choniates was a learned man himself
and he read classical literature.
And he read the Greek writer
from the Roman era, Plutarch,
who wrote of that Demosthenes,
the great speechmaker,
was famous from smelling
of the oil of his lamp.
He was reputed for not speaking
spontaneously in public,
as he would not put himself
in front of the podium
without proper preparation.
He was famous for sitting
with his oil lamp through the night,
carefully crafting his words.
For the church father, then,
the lamp of Demosthenes
marked the great tradition
of studiousness, oratory that a Christian
would aspire to continue
and instill in his audience.
The context of a landscape of
that pathetic Athens of the Byzantine era,
the details regarding our monument,
it's form, shape or precise
circumstances of creations
were of least importance.
Rather, the lamp of Demosthenes
was there to designate
the Athenian spirit,
it submit to immaterial forces,
its oratory, studiousness and language.
One should note that the Ancient Greek,
there is another figure that is often,
sometimes but less often,
associated with our monument is Diogenes,
another figure who was highly admired
by Christian followers and by the Church.
Moving in our time machine
we meet an Italian traveler,
Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli, or later known as,
better known as Cyriac of Ancona,
who lived in the 15th century,
and, armed with ancient texts
such as the Natural History
by the Roman writer Pliny,
traveled across the Mediterranean
in the 15th century,
and recorded all the antiquities he saw,
jams, bits and pieces,
architecture, coins, sculpture,
and even some exotic animals.
He also was a lover of inscriptions.
He collected all of his
inedited records in notebooks
that he called Commentaria,
which came together into
large, six large volumes,
although most of it was
destroyed in a fire.
He called his artifacts the
relics of sacrosanct antiquity.
And that gives a different tone
to the looking at the monument now.
When he traveled to Athens in 1436
he saw our monument and made,
this is perhaps the first
rendition that we find.
Viewing this slide, on the left,
and those of you who can read
Greek you can see Lysikrates,
and if you don't read Greek
you can see something
that looks like an A,
that's an alpha right there.
He actually identified the name,
but he didn't make more of that.
For the first time, then,
we have evidence of an engagement
with the epigraphic habit
of classical ambiguity.
We begin to see the seeds
of close study of the past,
of that sacrosanct past.
Still, as this image of a female statue
right next to it suggests,
this was part of a large mix
of all kinds of ancient things
that were not yet sorted through.
There were no, there was no
engagement in classifications.
As we move in time, then,
the Lantern on Demosthenes continued to be
the most common title
used for our monument.
And we're moving quickly
to the 17th century,
when in 1669 a French Capuchin order
acquired the land where
the monument stood,
and incorporated it in its grounds.
Here we see an image published in 1858
where you can see the monument,
the silhouette of the monument,
incorporated within the monastery.
Notably, the French,
the father of the order
who purchased the land
claimed that the one
condition for acquisition
was the preservation of the monument.
The monastery became a home
of travelers and visitors.
One of them was a soldier
who actually was escaped,
a Persian soldier,
who in 1674 escaped
slavery and came to there,
and he was the first to
decipher the entire inscription.
Later, in the year 1675,
a French Jacob Spon and a George Wheler,
a Frenchman and a British man,
were there and managed to stay in Athens
and stayed in the monastery.
And in this slide I'll
show you their rendition
of the same monument.
Here they also reported about
that Lantern of Demosthenes,
that the locals also say that
was the study of Demosthenes.
Mind you, the Capuchin orders,
they've transformed the
space into a little study,
so now we can imagine Demosthenes
actually staying there
or spending time there.
It's a small library.
Spon described the strats,
and was the first to hypothesize
it was a victory monument.
By contrast, he thought that the relief
depicts the labors of Hercules,
and he didn't really
give a complete account.
At this time the monument
then acquired an additional dimension.
It was the heart of a fascination
in learning about Greek antiquity,
as well as the European quest
for ownership of bits and
pieces of classical antiquity,
both literally and culturally.
In 1762, as I mentioned before,
the title Choragic Monument was
coined by Stuart and Revett.
Yet the Fanari of Demosthenes
continued to shine brightly,
even beyond Athens.
In 1771, need this is a
Lantern of Demosthenes,
and this is still how it's called,
was erected in Staffordshire, England.
And across the channel in 1803
a terracotta model of the
monument was displayed in Paris
and drew the attention
of none other than Napoleon Bonaparte,
who was so impressed that he
ordered to have a tower erected
at the Parc de Saint-Cloud,
and placed that copy
of the lantern on top.
So here is a drawing of the
Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris
at the time, in the 19th century.
The lantern was lit whenever
the Napoleonic Council met,
so from an idea of a lantern
it became a real lantern,
right there, a marker
of French government.
That tower was destroyed during
the Prussian War in 1870,
so all we have are these search records
from the 19th century.
And back in Athens the
Lantern of Demosthenes
continued to serve the monastery.
And I said that it served as a study.
One of the people who stayed there
was none other than Lord Byron,
so it became known as Lord Byron's study,
or perhaps bedroom,
and there's even some American professor
from Johns Hopkins who in 1896 said,
"It could not be a bedroom
"because a bed wouldn't fit there,"
and gave all the measurements,
so big debate, this is scholarship.
And after Greece got its
independence from the Turks,
the Communists were destroyed,
and, but the French, however,
held it as their own.
And they were proud for having
saved it from Lord Elgin,
the same man who took the
Elgin Marbles to Athens,
he also wanted to bring the monument
from Athens to London,
to the British Museum,
but the French didn't let him,
and they're very proud of it.
It's the property of France,
which conserved it intact
nearly two centuries,
and they wanted to return
it to the reborn Greece.
And here is a slide that shows
you that after restoration,
this is a lantern slide
from the 19th century.
I'm not sure about that date
but you can see the it's post restoration
and there's a fence around it,
and that was the work of the French,
but before returning it to Greece.
That still is there in the scholarship.
There's French pride connected here.
Now, I cannot end this without
mentioning another place
where you can find a copy of
the Monument of Lysikrates.
There are plenty of them.
One of them is in, of
course, in the US, plenty,
and this is the State
Capitol of Tennessee.
It was designed by William Strickland.
And the upper part had
the same circular form
and Corinthian columns.
And this building also features
in such pictures from the Civil War,
and even on this banknote from that era.
Local pride, if you like.
We've traveled in time today,
trying to get a grasp
of the very long history
of the perceptions and receptions
of one Athenian monument
that could play a social
role, political role,
could be thought through various lenses,
a product of Athenian
democracy, religious festival,
marker of culture, Greek
learnedness and oratory,
or an icon simply of
classical architecture
that can be replicated in various ways.
But perhaps this evening we may also want
to think about it as a reminder
of the importance of sponsorship,
of those who are giving,
endowing and allowing us
to have occasions like this,
those whose generosity allows us
to continue with our educational efforts
and the study and love for the arts.
Please join me in
thanking the Bross family
for allowing us to have this occasion.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- Well, thank you, Milette.
We have time for a couple of questions
if there's any questions or
comments from the audience.
- I mean, the idea that
now everyone believes
the German archeologist who
claims that it was open.
It's a little more complicated than that.
There is evidence, but he could,
we actually can reconstruct
it in different ways.
The point is, it was mostly enclosed
except for one part that may
have been or likely was open.
But you could also think
about it as having had doors,
perhaps, or some other
closure, right there.
- [Man] (speaks faintly)
Perception of the vighn term?
- Yeah, oh yeah, if you were
to have, yeah, and the fact,
and the Capuchin order had it open,
so I'm not against it,
I'm just saying that the
reconstruction of that statue,
and that sort of gets it a little beyond
what the evidence say.
But yes, you're right, yep,
answering could be that, too.
I left it open on purpose.
Absolutely, thanks.
- [Man In Audience] The
original back data--
- Oh, no no no, there was a copy,
there was a terracotta model
that was just destroyed
in the Prussian War.
That was it.
- Okay, was there any point
like you would be after an original--
- No, no, no, no.
They all, it stayed, it's still there.
It's all right, that wasn't clear,
so let's kind of.
No, no, that was just to show
that the same monument is
copied in multiple places.
I started up with the Chicago hotel,
but actually it's, you start looking at,
you'll find almost,
it's a project of its own.
It's fun.
- They copy, they were like--
- Yeah, the French, yeah,
and they turned it into this sort of
Napoleonic (speaks foreign
language), yeah, lantern.
- We used it as.
- So a lot of it
is actually maintained in its original,
some of it was altered.
Like, for example, the
frieze of the tripods.
So there's the section that's
still fourth century BCE,
and some was added on.
But they actually are very proud,
and that was part of their rhetoric,
that they haven't altered
it and they kept it intact.
The interior I wouldn't, you know,
want to go too much into that,
because was used as a library.
But the exterior, the form, the wall,
especially the roof, and the inscriptions,
these are all original.
In general, first of all you
could think their terrain
is not identical to what it
was in the fourth century BCE.
And there's more archeological work
that has been done there.
And one has to take the
viewer's point of view.
I've talked, yesterday
I actually really looked
at the sort of the language used,
which actually doesn't really engage with
how people really saw where these were,
but because they didn't,
but what they saw is what
they tell us they saw.
- So with that, please join me again
in thanking Milette Gaifman
and also the Bross family
and the Art Institute
for this wonderful event.
(audience applauding)
