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Oct. 4th, 2005
One man's Mede is another man's Persian
Oct. 4th, 2005 02:52 pmBack to the capsule reviews, for a change. The British Museum's Forgotten Empire exhibition has been all over the papers, trailed as a successor to the Royal Academy's exhibitions on Aztecs and Turks.
I found it a bit of a disappointment, but that's mostly my fault; I was set up to compare it to the other two exhibitions. For a start, think of the dates. Aztecs: 1300-1550 (ish). Turks: 600-1600. Persians: 550-330 BC -- between one and two thousand years earlier than the others. Of course it's going to be the smallest and drabbest exhibition of the three. Expecting otherwise is like going to the Colosseum and expecting Alton Towers.
The exhibits are impressive, once you recalibrate your expectations. So we start with a few carvings, then it's straight into a roomful of chunks of Persepolis, and mightily impressive it is too. And then we have a few rooms of smaller bits and bobs -- some of them extremely intricate and beautiful, but still a very British-Museum-esque display of object-filled cabinets, labelled as if for experts. Then a bust of Alexander the Great, a few words of explanation, the Cyrus cylinder and we're out the door.
There's still something wrong here, though. The space is tiny. As in "no room to move, even on a quiet weekday morning". Presumably it must be wheelchair-accessible, but I can't imagine how. The audioguide seems determined to rush you round; it picks out only one or two objects per room, and tells you nothing much beyond what's on the printed captions. There's not much hint of how this empire arose, how it influenced the rest of the world, or what happened after Alexander went away again. Perhaps the curators feel you ought to know that already, and perhaps I should. Or perhaps some of the facts aren't known at all, and they don't want to speculate, but really I'd have been happy to see some speculation.
Anyway, it doesn't match up to the bloodthirsty oddness of the Aztecs, or the thousand-year cross-continental dash of the Turks. But it's astounding that these artefacts exist at all, and it's worth seeing -- just be sure to go on a rainy Tuesday, and don't bother paying for the audioguide.
I found it a bit of a disappointment, but that's mostly my fault; I was set up to compare it to the other two exhibitions. For a start, think of the dates. Aztecs: 1300-1550 (ish). Turks: 600-1600. Persians: 550-330 BC -- between one and two thousand years earlier than the others. Of course it's going to be the smallest and drabbest exhibition of the three. Expecting otherwise is like going to the Colosseum and expecting Alton Towers.
The exhibits are impressive, once you recalibrate your expectations. So we start with a few carvings, then it's straight into a roomful of chunks of Persepolis, and mightily impressive it is too. And then we have a few rooms of smaller bits and bobs -- some of them extremely intricate and beautiful, but still a very British-Museum-esque display of object-filled cabinets, labelled as if for experts. Then a bust of Alexander the Great, a few words of explanation, the Cyrus cylinder and we're out the door.
There's still something wrong here, though. The space is tiny. As in "no room to move, even on a quiet weekday morning". Presumably it must be wheelchair-accessible, but I can't imagine how. The audioguide seems determined to rush you round; it picks out only one or two objects per room, and tells you nothing much beyond what's on the printed captions. There's not much hint of how this empire arose, how it influenced the rest of the world, or what happened after Alexander went away again. Perhaps the curators feel you ought to know that already, and perhaps I should. Or perhaps some of the facts aren't known at all, and they don't want to speculate, but really I'd have been happy to see some speculation.
Anyway, it doesn't match up to the bloodthirsty oddness of the Aztecs, or the thousand-year cross-continental dash of the Turks. But it's astounding that these artefacts exist at all, and it's worth seeing -- just be sure to go on a rainy Tuesday, and don't bother paying for the audioguide.