A Voyage to Olympus for Young Mortals

The New York Times
By LAUREL GRAEBER

The Cyclops, hairy and forbidding, arrived last week. Aristotle, literally a talking head, took his place early this month. The Trojan horse, 13 feet tall, came in April. But Odysseus — the voyaging warrior and undisputed hero of this scene — won’t make his grand entrance until Friday.

That’s because Odysseus is your child, or your neighbor’s child, or any other mortal visiting an exhibition that opens that day at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.

Called “Gods, Myths and Mortals: Discover Ancient Greece,” the 4,000-square-foot show presents an odyssey that is physical, historical, cultural and technological. It is also the Odyssey — that is, Homer’s — with a section that invites a young visitor to navigate a virtual ship on a floor-to-ceiling screen through a hailstorm of boulders, walk a curving balance beam between Scylla and Charybdis, and face other challenges on the journey home to Ithaca.

More than two years in the making, it is the most ambitious and expensive exhibition ($2 million, including programs) that the museum has ever produced, involving five universities, the Greek government, the History Channel (it produced three videos), a panel of some 15 scholars and intensive research with 8- to 11-year-olds.

“It’s our first major exhibition about antiquity,” Andrew S. Ackerman, the museum’s executive director, said in an interview, “and the first time we’ve displayed ancient archaeological artifacts.” Those antiquities, ranging from coins to a sixth-century-B.C. amphora, or vessel, with an image of Athena driving a chariot, were borrowed from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

It is pure serendipity, museum officials say, that the show is opening only a month after the renovated Greek and Roman galleries just across Central Park at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But while the two museum experiences are in some ways complementary, the Children’s Museum says it intends to provide a context to make visits to the Met more understandable. Mr. Ackerman recalled one child in his research group who asked, “Didn’t the Greeks do anything more than make statues?” He hopes the show will answer that question.
“Our goal was not to separate art from history from science from philosophy,” he said. “Traditionally, when you go to an art museum, you only see art. At a history museum, only history. But in ancient Greece, it was all of a piece. We wanted that holistic experience.”

The comprehensive approach is apparent in the four sections of the exhibition, which focuses on two main periods: the late Bronze Age (about 1500 to 1200 B.C.) and the Classical period (about 480 to 323 B.C.) The first area, “The Gods of Olympus,” includes a video introduction to Greek culture narrated by Zeus, Poseidon and Athena, whose tall painted figures preside.

The space also includes digital quizzes about the gods and a chance to play what is essentially a game of 20 questions with Aristotle, a talking bust. The second, “Growing Up Greek,” introduces the household and the gymnasium, or school, with stations that explain the importance of weaving (there is a real loom to try) and the society’s emphasis on physical fitness: two mechanical hands on pedestals invite children (and curious adults) to arm-wrestle.

The “Odyssey” section opens with the huge Trojan horse, whose multilevel interior is open for climbing. Some of the subsequent journey is then presented in physical form — like the cave of Polymephus (the Cyclops), with fuzzy animatronic sheep that bleat when children crawl under them, as Odysseus did to escape — and some in digital form, like a game that presents situations from the Odyssey and asks players to choose among strategies; the game then gives feedback on their responses.

“It’s the ideal of the examined life,” said Megan Cifarelli, an assistant professor of art history at Manhattanville College and the exhibition’s curator. “We want them to reflect on their decisions.”

The last section, “Discovering Greece,” underscores why the museum undertook the project: In addition to models and digitized explorations of Greek science and architecture, the display links Greek forms to contemporary buildings (the White House), Greek discoveries to modern research and ancient Greek to English words.

“There was the realization that this was all really needed,” said Karen Snider, the museum’s deputy director for exhibitions. “Children are no longer getting the exposure to the classics that would give them the grounding for understanding our culture.”

Never, it seems, has so much costly 21st-century technology gone into so many ancient recreations. As well as substantial financing from the city, the museum obtained $285,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. “This is a kind of model of in-depth, sophisticated humanities education,” Bruce Cole, the endowment’s chairman, said in a telephone interview.

One aspect that helped win the endowment’s support was the museum’s insistence on authenticity. The Greek government provided, at its own expense, replicas of objects — votive sculptures, wall reliefs, household items — that were too fragile to travel. The museum also contracted for a brand-new model of the reconstructed Antikythera Mechanism, a geared navigational device from 150 to 100 B.C. nicknamed the world’s first computer. Even the wall art is period style.

“Something that bothers me in children’s illustrations of the ancient world is that to make them appealing, they feel they have to make them not Greek,” Dr. Cifarelli said. Here, she explained, every image is actually based on, or inspired by, an ancient artwork.

But the desire for accuracy also raised thorny questions, which led the museum to navigate between its own Scylla and Charybdis: to present a watered-down version of ancient Greece or risk offending parents. It ultimately favored realism. There are no fig leaves on the illustrations of male athletes; the text notes that Greek households had slaves; and warfare is addressed, though bloodlessly.

“The history of humanity is the history of conflict,” Dr. Cifarelli said. “And we didn’t want to pretend that it was great to be a woman in fifth-century-B.C. Athens.” In “Growing Up Greek,” children learn that girls were not allowed an education, were confined to the home and were married around 13.

Still, the show, scheduled to travel to four cities after its Manhattan run, has many comic elements. Sometimes there is humor in the artifacts: the text explains that lead bullets (the Greeks shot them via a sling device) were often inscribed with the ancient Greek equivalent of “Ow.” And sometimes the comedy is invented: The “Odyssey” section has a Sirens’ Cove that is a karaoke stand. Here children imitate those bad guys (or rather girls) by singing familiar pop with mischievous new lyrics. For instance, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” becomes “He Will Survive” (a reference to Odysseus), with lines like these:

He should have run into those rocks
He should have slipped into that sea
If we’d known he’d make it this far
We’d have tried to sing on key.

While test groups of children have found the karaoke and the video technology irresistible, the museum is hoping that young visitors will also remember the myths and achievements they refer to. Or, as two of the gods put it in the video, sounding a bit like disdainful middle schoolers: “The Greeks did pretty well.”

“For puny mortals.”

“Gods, Myths and Mortals” runs through December 2008 at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, the Tisch Building, 212 West 83rd Street; (212) 721-1223. It then departs on a national tour, beginning in Chicago.