3 October 2013
Almost a year ago
we visited Pompeii for the first time and were bowled over by the
scale of the site and the size of the preserved buildings. So we had
been looking forward to seeing the exhibition ‘Life and Death:
Pompeii and Herculaneum’ at The British Museum. It was so difficult
to get tickets for the exhibition when we booked, in May this year,
that we ended up going on the final day last Sunday. There were huge
crowds waiting for a last chance to see the well-preserved relics of
Roman life and, even with the timed ticket system, you had to be very
patient to get close to each of the exhibits. The excellent audio
guide proved a very useful way to pass the time while queuing. ‘Life
and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum’ wasn’t a very big exhibition
but that meant it was possible to explore everything it contained –
and this took us a good ninety minutes. The exhibition was laid out
in rooms equating to the rooms of a typical Roman villa, making sense
of the context of the many artefacts. The quality of preservation of
the wooden objects from Herculaneum was amazing. We were also struck
by how overtly sexual (by modern standards) many of the pictures and
sculptures were. There was one particularly explicit piece (if you’ve
seen the exhibition you will know the one I mean!) that was located
in a small side room with a notice by the entrance suggesting it
wasn’t suitable for children. While I was there one father was
getting exasperated by the enthusiasm of his young son (who must have
been 7 or 8 years old) to see whatever it was his dad didn’t want
him to see. In response to the boy’s pleading “why?” the man
eventually shouted “because I’m your father and I’m exercising
moral judgement!”. The casts of the bodies of some of the volcano’s
victims, captured in agonising poses at the moment of death, provided
an eerie and moving end to the exhibition.
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