When the U.S.A.

discovered Byzantium:
A Tale of the Cultural Other
Katerina Biliouri1

ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the reception of Byzantine art in the United States. It aims to shed light on
the ways that Byzantine otherness has been perceived and formulated within different sociopolitical frameworks. Specifically, it examines two moments in the history of understanding and
presenting the Byzantine cultural other in the United States. The first moment goes back to the
discovery of Byzantium in the 1930s within the dominant theory of cultural internationalism. The
second is placed today in the current time of multiculturalism, through the study of three
Byzantine art exhibitions organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: The Age of
Spirituality in 1977, The Glory of Byzantium in 1997 and Faith and Power in 2004. The sense
of exoticism ascribed to Byzantine art in these might vary, but Byzantium always remains the
exotic other in the U.S.A.

KEYWORDS: Byzantine art reception, cultural internationalism, multiculturalism, Metropolitan

Museum of Art Byzantine exhibitions, Age of Spirituality, Glory of Byzantium, Faith and
Power

Introduction
In an article published in the New Left Review, the philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj
iek characterised the current much-debated issue of multiculturalism as the ideal form
of global capitalism, an attitude which, from a kind of empty global position, treats each
local culture in the same way a colonizer treats colonized people; as natives whose
otherness and mores are to be carefully studied and respected (iek, 1997).
Bearing in mind this theoretical approach, the current article is an attempt to examine
whether cultural otherness is still viewed today as an exotic native, despite the presentday issues of globalisation and multiculturalism. Moreover, it aims to shed light on the
ways that this continuously ascribed exoticism is reshaped and redefined by the sociopolitical and economic reality of each time. Overall, it is influenced by the poststructuralist idea that self-perception plays a critical role in ones interpretation of the
other. In order to study all the above-mentioned the tale of a cultural other within a
specific society is unfolded. For the purposes of this research, Byzantine art serves as
an excellent field to ponder such issues, as simultaneously it is and is not part of the
Western tradition.
This article does not cover the whole story of Byzantine art in the United States until
today. It examines two historical moments of Byzantine arts presence in the United
States: the first is upon the entrance of Byzantiums artistic achievements when
America appeared on the market (Weitzmann, 1947); the second is at the turn of the
1

Archaeologist-Museologist, MPhil University of Cambridge,

Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece, kbiliouri@hotmail.com
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

35

Katerina Biliouri
21st century through the presentation of three major Byzantine art exhibitions, organised
by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1977 the Mets first exhibition The
Age of Spirituality was dealing with Early Christian art. Twenty years later, in 1997 The
Glory of Byzantium was an exhibition devoted to the art of the Middle Byzantine period
and was the blockbuster show of the year. The third exhibition Byzantium: Faith and
Power (1261-1557), presenting Late Byzantine art, was organised in the spring of 2004
as a successor to the previous ones. Being organised by the same museum, these
exhibitions offer a robust example of the gradual shaping of otherness through the
evolved practises applied by the same institution.
Byzantium was discovered by the United States in the 1930s, when the dominant
socio-political theory was that of cultural internationalism. Its study flourished during the
post World War II era of the widely discussed cultural imperialism. Today, and within the
context of the presiding theory of multiculturalism, Byzantine art exhibitions are
considered as some of the most successful and most visited exhibitions in the United
States. Moreover, between the first and the following Met exhibitions, the introduction of
ethnic marketing practises into museums also influenced issues of understanding and
displaying otherness.
Discovering Byzantium
The development of research activities and private collections of Byzantine objects in
America, according to the influential art historian Kurt Weitzmann, must definitely be
viewed against the European background of the 1930s. In Europe the growing interest in
Byzantine art had crystallised before the United States. The great international exhibition
in Paris in 1931, the first entirely devoted to this field, presented to a large public the
artistic achievements of a culture against which a prejudice of monotony and sterility had
existed since the days of the Italian Renaissance. The Louvre, the Cluny Museum in
Paris, the British Museum in London and the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin had
started establishing their own systematic collections. The Museo Sacro of the Vatican
and the Cabinet des Medailles in Paris already possessed several Byzantine objects.
The awareness of private collectors on new trends in artistic taste and their attraction to
luxurious small objects of Byzantine art, coupled with the conservative policy of most
museums, resulted to private collectors in the United States becoming the chief rivals of
European museums (Weitzmann, 1947: 396). At the same time, the American School of
Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA) legitimised Byzantium as a worthwhile period of
archaeological investigation. Byzantium entered the ASCSA via modernism and its
avant-garde vibrancy and this medievalist inclusionism was evident throughout the
whole decade preceding World War II (Kourelis, 2007). Obviously, the new trend was to
prove the ability of dealing with Byzantine art as soon as possible, either through its
acquisition or through excavations.
At the beginning of the 20th century the outstanding private collections formed the basis
of the most important museum collections of Byzantine art in the United States. In 1917
Pierport Morgan donated his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
in 1925 the Byzantine collection of Charles L. Freer was made accessible to the public
as part of the Smithsonian Institution and in 1931 Henry Walters bequeathed his
collection to his native city of Baltimore, forming the Walters Art Gallery, currently
possessing one of the richest collections of medieval art in the United States and having
since been renamed as Walters Art Museum. Rare objects by collector Josef Brummer
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

36

WHEN THE U.S.A. DISCOVERED BYZANTIUM: A TALE OF THE CULTURAL OTHER

are nowadays found in the Dumbarton Oaks collection in Washington and the Met in
New York. The Bliss collection, which is the basis of the Dumbarton Oaks collection,
became a part of Harvard University in 1940 together with its Research Library.
Moreover, Byzantine art was gradually placed in the centre of scholarly interest through
the awareness of its contribution to the formation of the artistic language of the Latin
West. Universities and museums in the U.S.A organised exhibitions, such as the Pagan
and Christian Art in the Latin West and the Byzantine East by the Art Museum in
Worcester in 1937, Pagan and Christian Egypt held by the Brooklyn Museum and
Early Christian and Byzantine Art in Baltimore, both in 1947 (Weitzmann, 1947).
In 1925 the collections of George Grey Barnard and John D. Rockefeller Jr formed the
initial collection of the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum devoted to the art
and architecture of medieval Europe. The Cloisters, which opened its doors to the public
in its current building in 1938, did not include in its collection all phases of art, but was
restricted to European medieval art, comprised of the Romanesque and Gothic periods
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 1926). As the discovery of Byzantium had just
begun, European medieval art and the Middle Ages were linked solely to what was
understood as western medieval art. Byzantium was often given only a passing glance
as a medieval heir to the classical world which placed Western Christendom at the
centre.
Therefore, a reinterpretation of Byzantine art and its importance was needed. The United
States, having their cultural roots in Europe, could not leave out of the picture one of the
longest living cultures, lasting for more than a millennium and represented by an art that
combined classical heritage to essential values of Christianity (Weitzmann, 1947). In the
years that followed the collection was enriched with Byzantine art objects, forming the
current Metropolitan Museum of Art collection of medieval art, one of the richest in the
world, which encompasses objects of this long and complex period in all of its many
phases, from its pre-Christian antecedents in Western Europe through the early
Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic periods.
The exotic other
It is evident that there was a sudden explosion of interest in Byzantine art in the 1930s. It
was the unknown, beautiful, mysterious, distant, exotic and even orphaned cultural
other; a stranger that appeared on the United States doorstep. During the interwar
period, in an issue of the Parnassus journal, J. Shapley, while explaining why Americans
should be so interested in Byzantine art, wrote:
Much has been made of the aloofness of Byzantine art. It is, however, illogical to
conclude that this should arouse a corresponding aloofness in the observer, in us. Since
Byzantine art is foreign to our tradition we like its reserve. The stranger who appears on
our doorstep is far more likely to enjoy a favourable reception if he is reticent, rather than
pushing or officious. Indeed, if he is an involuntary visitor, such as a wee, helpless
founding, without parents or protectors -and Byzantine art is almost that, largely a
rediscovery of our own time, severed from any existing political or national unit- he is apt
to be taken in and fostered (Shapley, 1931).
Byzantine art is compared to a helpless and orphaned visitor, in desperate need of
protection. Such comparisons, seen in retrospective, could be characterised as quite
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

37

Katerina Biliouri
amateur, due to the fact that Byzantine art was still something new and unknown in the
United States. This rediscovery was presented as a hidden treasure from past times,
despite the ongoing religious value it carried for Orthodox or other European countries.
At the same time, the notable British art historian Talbot Rice, was trying to awake the
interest of art students in studying Greek icons, since, not only in Russia but also in
Greece, Byzantine art survived as a living entity (Rice, 1933). Attempting another
comparison of this exotic other, Shapley continues:
In matters of economics, we Americans have been accustomed to admire ourselves, for
we have felt that we were self-made. In matters of culture, we have been admiring
others, for we have felt that we must be eclectic. Byzantine art is precisely the candidate
for the second type of admiration: it is most decidedly exotic. Reserved, churchy, and
ceremonial it seems enticingly foreign. Like an odalisque, its tenure of the affections
depends on its capacity to remain perpetually different, inexhaustibly strange (Shapley,
1931).
Byzantium and cultural internationalism
Taking into consideration the above-mentioned quotes, it is obvious that the notion of the
exotic and unprotected otherness acquired an us Americans and the others, possibly
Europeans, socio-political distinction. Around the end of the Civil War and at the end of
the 1930s there was a special sense in which the idea [of culture] became widespread
(Susman, 1973). On that side of the Atlantic the very idea of showing Byzantine art in
public exhibitions took root and was pursued with greater zeal than in any European
country (Weitzmann, 1947). Such a climate of competitiveness with Europe is not
unusual for that time. According to M. Vlahos, director of the Centre for the Study of
Foreign Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, until 1945 Americans never considered
themselves fraternally attached to Europe, nor did they talk about the West as a
political and cultural entity. However, they still considered themselves part of the AngloSaxon race (Vlahos, 1991). Competitiveness with Europe and consequent American
superiority can also be traced in the reception of Byzantine art, due to its ecclesiastical
character:
Most European writers are inclined to regard the ecclesiastical and formal qualities of
Byzantine art as disadvantageous to it. These qualities have undoubtedly played a part
in making it for a long time unpopular in Europe, but they have no such effect in America.
America is neither ecclesiastical nor anti-ecclesiastical and, above all, not both at once,
as countries often are (Shapley, 1931).
By the late 1940s, the new concept of the West proved to be a highly useful political
tool. The notion of the West and the definition of Western civilisation are long debated
issues, supporting either the notion of a universal Central civilisation or of a more
geographically based civilisation distinction. Byzantium, according to Lawrence J. Birken,
was one heir to the classical world that was often marginalised by the other heir,
Western Christendom. In the United States the traditional Western civilisation course still
invents a false genealogy linking the Greeks, Romans, Renaissance, Enlightenment and
the United States (Birken, 1992).
At the years following Wilsons presidency, the U.S. attempted to fashion an orderly
world. Akira Iriye, a prominent scholar of American diplomatic history, explains that
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

38

WHEN THE U.S.A. DISCOVERED BYZANTIUM: A TALE OF THE CULTURAL OTHER

Wilsonianism had an agenda of putting culture at the centre of international relations
(Iriye, 1994). After WWI this cultural internationalism, came of age, as the visions of the
recent horrors of the war promoted cultural interconnections among nations. The idea of
cultural internationalism was never abandoned, despite the 1929 major economic crisis.
After World War II Americans believed in their post-war mission of containment
(Vlahos, 1991) and the defence of Europe, which was still in ruins. The economic,
military and hence political supremacy of the U.S. in the late 40s reflected the enormous
destruction sustained by all the great industrial nations in the war. On the other hand, in
Greece between 1945 and 1965, Byzantium strangely disappeared from the pages of
Hesperia, the Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Under the
political pressures of the Marshall Plan and the reconstruction of Greece, classical
Greece, the cradle of democracy, had to be asserted over Byzantium (Kourelis, 2007:
434). Therefore, it is evident that different political, social and economic reasons were
each time behind any discovery, interruption and resurface of interest in Byzantium.
Summing up, the United States discovered Byzantium during the difficult periods of the
post Word War I era, the Great Depression, World War II, as well as its aftermath. In a
historical time characterised by progressive politics, middle-class assertiveness and
attempts albeit often patronising- at urban reform and cultural enlightenment (Blau,
1991), the reception of Byzantine art and its otherness could not remain uninfluenced.
As the United States was gradually becoming a key player in the cultural scene and
American private collectors rivalled European museums, Americans showed a growing
interest in Byzantine art. Byzantiums otherness in the United States was defined within
and by their evolvement from colonial to superpower status.
Byzantium and the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions
The second historical moment examined in this article is that of the aforementioned
Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions. Byzantine art acquires a different sense of
otherness and exoticism, defined this time by the dominant socio-political theory of
multiculturalism, an issue analysed after the presentation of the three exhibitions.
In 1977 the first exhibition entitled The Age of Spirituality explored the period of
Byzantiums history dating from the 4th to the 7th centuries. Nowadays, it is considered a
landmark exhibition, as for the first time 450 objects, many of which had never been
shown before in the United States, were gathered from over 100 public and private
collections, among them the British Museum, the Louvre and the Vatican. Therefore,
according to the aspirations of Thomas Hoving, the museums director at that time, the
objects were brought together in a new dynamic arrangement that will provide new
insights and new public appreciation for Late Antique and Early Christian art (Hoving,
1977). In the same Mets Bulletin issue, Kurt Weitzmann, the creative force behind the
exhibition, wrote about the importance of this fascinating period. The transition from the
dying classical to the rising -and finally triumphant- Christian culture was a complex
process, in which the two cultures coexisted and competed with each other (Weitzmann,
1977). The museums aim was exactly that; to unveil the friendly coexistence between
paganism and Christianity. Such a goal was not easy to achieve.
As suggested in a New York Times article concurrent to the exhibition, this complex and
fascinating period was often taught in schools in terms of a revolving door. The article
explained that when Christianity came in through that [revolving] door, paganism went
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

39

Katerina Biliouri
out and also that one of the more difficult transitions of history was dealt in ten minutes
(Russell, 1977).
The exhibition aimed to educate the public into a new way of thinking about that specific
period and its objects. Therefore, according to Philippe de Montebello in the exhibitions
catalogue and mentioned again in The Glory of Byzantium exhibitions catalogue- it
was a didactic exhibition of the highest quality; a combination of the relatively unfamiliar
with the intellectual revelation of an extraordinary era (De Montebello, 1997).

Fig. 1. Screenshot from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts online exploration of Byzantium,
drawn from the Teacher Packet accompanying the exhibition The Glory of Byzantium
(http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Byzantium/byzhome.html)

Twenty years later another exhibition brought Byzantine art closer to the United States
public. The exhibition entitled The Glory of Byzantium dealt with the Middle Byzantine
period and its second golden age stretching from the end of the iconoclastic period in
843 to the occupation of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 (fig. 1). Once again, a
wide range of objects with different provenance were assembled and displayed.
Specifically, through the gathering of objects from 119 collections and twenty-four
countries, the curators aimed at presenting the breadth of the empires art and culture.
Contrary to theories such as Samuel P. Huntingtons, suggesting that Byzantium and its
Orthodox Church belong not to the West but to the Rest, or else the various others
that do not possess the special institutions and beliefs that constitute Western civilisation
(Huntington, 1993), the museum aimed at presenting the cultural interaction and
coexistence of Byzantium with the Latin West and the Islamic East (Meyer, 1997). The
reception of the exhibition was enthusiastic in Europe: If ever an exhibition was worth
crossing an ocean to see, it is this (Moore, 1997). According to Philippe de Montebello,
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

40

WHEN THE U.S.A. DISCOVERED BYZANTIUM: A TALE OF THE CULTURAL OTHER

the museums director, it was by far the most challenging and the most important
exhibition that he had ever inaugurated (Collins, 1997).
Similarly, a few years later, in 2004, at a preview of the third large-scale exhibition
Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557) (fig. 2 and 3), the museums director
expressed his ambition that the latest presentation of Byzantine art will enhance public
appreciation of the exceptional artistic accomplishments of an era too often considered
primarily in terms of political decline (Pyle, 2004). However, whereas the two previous
shows read Byzantine art through its cultural contexts, the framework of this one was
different, focusing more on the aesthetics of painting over details of religious culture and
historical context (Gerstel, 2005: 331). The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented late
Byzantine art with objects from nearly 30 countries in Europe and the Middle East, which
constituted the Byzantine Empire during its history. Although Constantinople had
gradually diminished in power and surrendered to the Ottoman Turks, its art flourished.
This exhibition revealed the radiating influence of Byzantine art to the Italian and
Northern Renaissance, as well as the Islamic world.

Fig. 1. Screenshot from the website of the exhibition Faith and Power still available at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art website (http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/byzantium_III/index.html)

- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009

Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

41

Katerina Biliouri
By the time Byzantium: Faith and Power ended on July 4th 2004, more than 300,000
visitors had seen it, thus making it one of the Mets most popular exhibitions of the year.
According to Helen C. Evans, the exhibitions curator, it was the word of mouth, the
positive reviews and the ads that drew such a huge audience (Vogel, 2004). This
glorious exhibition with the ground-breaking opening and the dazzling array of art
(Strickland, 2004) received both a warm welcome by the critics and full media coverage.
In the very same articles praising the exhibition, both its organisation and display were
presented as a daunting and difficult task, since complex issues of cultural diplomacy of
the object-loaning countries had to be overcome. Therefore, as Michael Kimmelman
suggested, such a demanding exhibition could have been done only by a great museum,
maybe only by the Met at that time (Kimmelman, 2004).

Fig. 2. Screenshot from the Online Gallery Tour of the exhibition Faith and Power
which allowed a digital exploration of the objects on display
(http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Byzantium/byzantium_main.asp)

It was clearly an exhibition conceived from the very start as a blockbuster and not as a
typical museum show. According to Sharon Gerstel, one of the greatest challenges of
launching such an ambitious exhibition lay in presenting complex material to a highly
diversified audience. A period of such complexity, as the Late Byzantine, demanded a
different type of approach and display. As a result, a number of visitors could not grasp
the underlying meaning of the show. The decision to focus on the aesthetic qualities of
the objects, on details and brushstrokes rather than their deeper meaning and
significance may also reveal an attempt to avoid certain political pitfalls, as the art of
these last centuries is linked to modern national, religious and cultural identities.
(Gerstel, 2005).
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

42

WHEN THE U.S.A. DISCOVERED BYZANTIUM: A TALE OF THE CULTURAL OTHER

Byzantium, multiculturalism & the glory of the museum
In the years following the Second World War there was a considerable re-shaping of the
world system. The United States became an international player in terms of economic
and political influence. During the period of success and optimism of post-war America,
new visions of American society developed. The latest of these visions are expressed in
the movements of multiculturalism and political correctness, which are seen as facets of
a new, and morally assertive, view of American society, revolving around the efforts of
previously excluded groups to construct new identities in the American scene of politics
of identity (Spencer, 1994). Moreover, within the context of a globalisation that is about
the transformation of imperial power into supra-national operations of capital,
communications and culture (Shanks, 2004), market-led practises were introduced in
museums. As a result, the two latter Met exhibitions were fully organised projects not
only on the curatorial level, but also on their marketing and overall management, thus
affecting the promotion and reception of the exhibited Byzantine art.
The exhibitions organised by the Met were difficult curatorial projects, as they entailed
the coordination of loaned objects coming from different collections and countries. For
the first time in 1997, only six years after the Cold War had ended, the Glory of
Byzantium presented so many works of art coming from the countries of the dissolved
Soviet Union. However, in newspaper articles concurrent to the 1997 and 2004
exhibitions, Byzantine art was still characterised as mystical and exotic, but less
otherworldly than it was in the past. Despite the fact that no one could predict whether
the Glory of Byzantium show would get people to rethink the way history evolved, no
other Byzantine exhibition has gone to such lengths to spur interest in a slice of the past
that few Americans know about (Kimmelman, 1997).
In todays multicultural and multivocal world, museums are challenged to reinvent
themselves, adapting to changing expectations and conditions and responding with new
forms of organisation, exhibition design, programming and services (Kotler & Kotler,
1998). They are under increasing pressure to enter a marketing loop that focuses on
visitor numbers and revenue; if they fail to reach and attract sufficient audiences, they
are not likely to survive.
Within this reality and in order to build attendance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
applied ethnic marketing practices at the 1997 The Glory of Byzantium show, which
was even characterised as an ambitious enterprise (Moore, 1997). The otherness of
Byzantine art entered the sphere of the multicultural other. Several American ethnic
groups Armenian, Greek, Russian and Ukrainian- were the museums target groups
with advertisements of the exhibition tailored in their own language and their different
cultural identities. In only five boroughs of New York City the 1990 census counted
nearly 424,000 people of those ethnic derivations. The money in the Byzantium
campaign was estimated not less than $200,000 and it was the Mets most ambitious
foray into ethnic marketing, a rarity coming from a cultural institution (Collins, 1997). At
the same time, the exhibition received principal sponsorship and financial support from
major banks and cultural institutions from the object-loaning countries. Faith and Power
also drew a huge audience and was one of the Mets most visited shows of the year.
Jeffrey K. Smith, a professor of educational psychology at Rutgers University who
researches visitorship for the museum, said that about a quarter of the audience
developed an interest in Byzantine art after having been to the Met's previous Byzantine

- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009

Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

43

Katerina Biliouri
exhibitions, especially the last one, "The Glory of Byzantium" in 1997. By the exhibitions
end, its catalogue was one of the best-selling catalogues of the year (Vogel, 2004).
Apart from the other seen as a well aimed at target group, another sense of otherness
occurred through the demanding curatorial work, especially in the Glory of Byzantium
exhibition, which displayed works of art from the Byzantine cycle of countries with
contributions from Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, Hungary, Cyprus
and the Vatican (among others). It was the Mets genuine effort to present the Byzantine
Empire from the inside not as an exotic footnote to the history of the Latin West, but as a
complicated and diverse culture on its own terms, relevant to millions today
(Kimmelman, 1997). The Mets curators, in their effort to organise such a demanding
exhibition, had to negotiate with reluctant politicians, deal with deadly illnesses in the
host countries, travel across the globe in order to persuade monks and governments to
lend specific objects and overcome problems in the artefacts transportation. The
curators even had to exploit historical rivalries among countries and encourage a friendly
competition for the status of being considered the most generous lender, as it happened
in the case of Ukraine and Russia (Miller, 1997). In the exhibitions catalogue a long list
of people from all the object-loaning countries were thanked for their collaboration. In a
New York Times article the Mets special feat of diplomacy was described as follows:
But she [the exhibitions organiser] did not know the project would entail a dozen trips to
the end of the earth in less than three years, a three-month bout with malaria that nearly
killed her, praying with Orthodox monks at 4 a.m. at a remote Egyptian monastery, a
near-confrontation with the new Government of Turkey, and enlisting Vice-President Al
Gore and former President George Bush to help lobby recalcitrant donors (Miller, 1997).
Commenting on the same issue, Michael Kimmelman wrote that such shows could make
someone sceptical, especially when hearing the Met boast that this exhibition was a
special feat of diplomacy. Even so, despite the scepticism, he agreed that the museum
actually managed to defeat diplomacy (Kimmelman, 1997). The Glory of Byzantium
was probably a triumph over diplomatic problems that occurred within or among the
countries involved in the exhibition. However, by overemphasising such a diplomatic
specific achievement in a multicultural world, a political subtext concerning the cultural
other is revealed. iek, in an article on multiculturalism, argues that:
In the same way that global capitalism involves the paradox of colonization without the
colonizing Nation-State metropolis, multiculturalism involves patronizing Eurocentrist
distance and/or respect for local cultures without roots in ones particular culture. In other
words, multiculturalism is a racism with a distance it respects the Others identity,
conceiving the Other as a self-enclosed authentic community towards which he, the
multiculturalist, maintains a distance rendered possible by his privileged universal
position. Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content
(the multiculturalist is not a direct racist, he doesnt oppose to the Other the particular
values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this position as the privileged empty
point of universality from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other
particular cultures the multiculturalist respect for the Others specificity is the very form
of asserting ones own superiority (iek, 1997).
When an institution or museum presents the art of a society as multicultural as the
Byzantine to an equally multicultural public and when the dominating social theory of
multiculturalism is such a disputable subject, maybe the triumphant comments over
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

44

WHEN THE U.S.A. DISCOVERED BYZANTIUM: A TALE OF THE CULTURAL OTHER

diplomatic issues could have been less emphasised or even omitted. Otherwise, the
museum runs the risk of presenting itself as a modern Indiana Jones, the hero of the
action/adventure story, representative of Western culture and the dominant American
ideology (Aronstein, 1995). Back in the 1930s, through the private collectors effort to
form Byzantine art collections, glory was entirely ascribed to the United States, which
was gradually becoming metropolis of art. Today, each museum is a metropolis of art on
its own. Our time is the time of the Glory of the Museum (Liakos, 1997).
Conclusions
Byzantine art entered the United States due to the private collectors competitiveness
towards European museums in the 1930s. Today, otherness is not perceived only on the
level of the amazing exotica of the assembled Byzantine art objects, but also on the level
of the cultural otherness of the object-loaning countries.
In his 1928 magnificent poem Sailing to Byzantium, W. B. Yeats chose Byzantium as
his destination and as a metaphor for the magical and the faraway (Loughery, 1997).
Byzantium still remains that. An explanation behind the still unknown today Byzantine
art, its role and its influence can be traced in Robert S. Nelsons review of all the wellknown general art history books from the beginnings of the genre in the mid-nineteenth
century until today. The author -after closely examining art history books among which
those by Gombrich, Janson, Hartt, Stockstad and others- concludes that the alterity of
Byzantine art and the denial of its coevalness with Western medieval art have been
features of general histories of art for 150 years and resemble the earlier ordering of
universal history professed by Hegel. Those histories are clearly written from the
vantage point of Western Europe and America. An entirely different story would result if
the narrative centre was shifted to Russia, Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, etc.
On one hand, Byzantium and Islam are seen as relevant chapters in the rise of the West;
on the other hand, they function as foils for that history and thus must be isolated from
the principal story. Moreover, Nelson believes that Byzantine art is not introduced in
order to say something about the actual culture of people living in the Eastern
Mediterranean, but in order to define by contrast Western European art of the Middle
Ages and therefore Western Europeans and Americans of the current age (Nelson,
1996). It is exactly what the French philosopher Emmanuel Lvinas remarked ...[Words]
signify from the world and from the position of the one who is looking (Lvinas, 2003).
It is evident that art history presented in these textbooks transcends the various sociopolitical conditions in the United States. Byzantine alterity is sustained whether in the
multiculturalist world of today or the cultural imperialist and cultural internationalist world
of the past. Respect and appreciation towards Byzantine art from a distance, from
ieks suggested empty point of universality, and assertion of ones superiority is
evident in both historical moments examined in this article. Whether received in the
social context of cultural internationalism or multiculturalism, whether discovered by the
United States when viewing themselves as the promising cultural metropolis, whether
displayed today in museums which are cultural metropolises striving to prove their
superiority, whether part of the West or of the Rest, one thing is certain; the sense of the
exotic other is sustained, redefined and always existing.

- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009

Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

45

Katerina Biliouri

REFERENCES
Aronstein, S., 1995, "Not Exactly a Knight: Arthurian Narrative and Recuperative Politics
in the Indiana Jones Trilogy, Cinema Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4., p. 3-30.
Birken, L., 1992, What is Western Civilisation?, The History Teacher, Vol. 25, No. 4, p.
451-461
Blau, J. R., 1991, The Disjunctive History of U.S. Museums, 1869-1980, Social Forces,
Vol. 70, p. 87-105.
Collins, G.,1997, The Media Business: Advertising; The Met markets Glory of
Byzantium exhibition to those whose ancestors helped make it glorious, The New
York Times, 10/4/1997, section D, p.6.
De Montebello, P., 1997, Directors Foreword in the exhibitions catalogue The Glory of
Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261, p. 8-9.
Gerstel, S.E.J., 2005, The Aesthetics of Orthodox Faith, Art Bulletin, issue 87, p. 331341.
Hoving, T., 1977, Directors Note, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, issue:
autumn, p.1.
Huntington, S.P., 1993, The clash of civilizations?, Foreign Affairs, issue: summer, vol.
72/3, p. 22-50.
Huntington, S.P., If Not Civilizations, What? Samuel Huntington Responds to his
Critics, Foreign Affairs, issue: November/December.
Iriye, A., 1993, The Globalising of America, 1913-1945, in Cohen W.I. (ed.), The
Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol. 3, New York: Cambridge
University Press, p. 72.
Kimmelman, M., 1997, Art Review; Embraced by Mystic Wonders, The New York
Times, section C, 14/3/1997, NY Edition, p. 1.
Kimmelman, M., 2004, Decay and Glory: Back to Byzantium, The New York Times, Art
Review, 26/3/2004, section E, p.33.
Kotler, N. and Kotler, P., 1998, Museum Strategy and Marketing, San Fransisco: Jossey
Bass Pubishers.
Kourelis, K., 2007, Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth 1920s1930s, Hesperia, vol. 76, issue 2, p. 391-442.
Latour, B., 2005, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lvinas, E., 2003, Humanism of the Other, Poller Nidra (trans.), Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, p.11-12.
Liakos, A., 1997, I Doxa tou Mouseiou, To Vima online, section Gnomes/Nees Epohes
30/3/1997 (in Greek), last visited 30/7/2009:
http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&artid=86934&ct=114&dt=30/03/1997
Loughery, J., 1997, Approaches to the Sacred, The Hudson Review, Vol. 50, No. 2, p.
291-297.
Macdonald, S. and Fyle, G., 1996, Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and
Diversity in a Changing World, Oxford: Blackwell Sociological Review.
McLean, F., 1997, Marketing the Museum, London: Routledge.
Meyer, K.E., 1997, The Wests Debt to Byzantium, The New York Times, 30/3/1997,
section 4, p.10.
- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009
Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

46

WHEN THE U.S.A. DISCOVERED BYZANTIUM: A TALE OF THE CULTURAL OTHER

Miller, J.,1997, A Wild Sail to New York From Byzantium; Pulling the Strings (and
Catching Malaria) for the Mets Most Complex Show, The New York Times,
12/6/1997, section C, p.13.
Moore, S., 1997, The empires strike back: From the Middle Byzantine to Christian Dior
fashion, Susan Moore looks at decorative arts, The Financial Times (London,
England), 4/1/1997, section: Global Art, p.11.
Moore, S., 1997, Revelation of richness: Susan Moore on an unmissable collection from
the golden age of Byzantium, Financial Times (London, England), 5/4/1997, p.7.
Nelson, R. S., 1996, Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art, Gesta, Vol. 35,
No.1, p.3-11
Pyle, R., 2004, Icons, ancient manuscripts highlight Met exhibit, The Associated Press,
17/3/2004 (available online at several journals, e.g.:
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/032004/art_LA0699-7.shtml last visited 25/7/2009
Rice, T., 1933, An exhibition of Byzantine and Greek Paintings, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 62, No. 359, p. 88-91.
Russel, J., 1977, Art: Illuminating Dark Ages at Met, The New York Times, 18/11/1977,
p. 74.
Shanks, M., 2004, Archaeology/Politics, The Blackwell Companion to Archaeology, J.
Bintliff (ed), Oxford, Blackwell.
Shapley, J., 1931, Byzantine Art in Chicago, Parnassus, Vol.3, No. 8., p. 29.
Steinfels, P., 1997, Beliefs, The New York Times, 19/4/1997, p. 25.
Strickland, C., 1997, Byzantium Art Still Shines, The Home Forum, 29/5/1997.
Strickland, C., 2004, East and West meet at Met, The Christian Science Monitor (Boston,
MA), 22/3/2004, p. 12.
Susman, W. I., 1973, Culture as History, Pantheon, p. 153.
The Opening of the Cloisters [no authors name mentioned], The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 5, May 1926, p. 113-116.
Vogel, C., 2004, A Byzantine Blockbuster, The New York Times, 26/12/2004, sect. 2.
Vlahos, M., 1991, Culture and Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, No. 82, p. 59-78.
Weitzmann, K., 1947, Byzantine Art and Scholarship in America, American Journal of
Archaeology, Vol. 51, No.4, p. 394-418.
Weitzmann, K., 1977, Introduction, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, autumn
1977, p. 2-11.
iek, S., 1997, Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism, The
New Left Review, I/225.

- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009

Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

47

Katerina Biliouri

... :

.

- . ,

. 1930
. ,
,
: 1977,
1997 2004.
,
...

-: , , ,
, ,
,

- International Scientific Electronic Journal, Issue 5, 2009

Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean

48