Agamemnon and other Greeks

Last updated on: March 26, 2016 at 3:55 pm by Jane the Actuary

Agamemnon and other Greeks 2016-03-26T15:55:10-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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It’s Spring Break — though up ’til today, it’s been spent at home, alternating between work and family, while my husband, with my youngest watching, if not participating, building a long-promised treehouse. But today we finally made it to the Field Museum to see the travelling exhibit The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great. Hooray for us!

So, first of all, if you’re in the Chicago area, you should see this exhibit, which runs through April 10th. It’s one of a very limited number of stops, having travelled previously to two museums in Canada, and making a final stop at the National Geographic Museum in D.C. before the items return to their home museums in Greece.

And I was really quite impressed with the items there, including the funerary mask unearthed at Mycenae which inspired Heinrich Schliemann to say, “I have gazed upon the eyes of Agamemnon” —

and the second one, which he subsequently decided looked more noble, and thus must have been the real Agamemnon funerary mask, though in both cases he was wrong as the time period didn’t match up — and in any case, the second one was a replica, though one that dates to the time that the site was excavated, anyway.

The exhibit was organized chronologically, with quite a bit of historical context, as it moved from the Bronze Age, and the Minoans and Mycenaeans, to the Iron Age, the Archaic and Classical periods, and ending with Alexander the Great.

And admittedly I’m partial to the Greeks, what with my grandfather coming from Greece, but the history of the ancient Greeks is pretty cool. I mean, it’s a rocky mountainous peninsula with nothing much to recommend it, but from early on, the Greeks spread throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, developed an advanced culture in terms of literature, philosophy, art, etc., and did so as groupings of individual city-states rather than massive empires, and, in fact, defeated the mighty Persian Empire against all odds.

After this exhibit, we walked through the museum’s exhibit on “Pacific Spirits” — that is, the cultures of New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, before they were transformed by their encounters with Westerners, and it’s really quite remarkable that, even prior to the advent of advanced metalworking, and the rise of literacy, the Greeks and their neighbors were so very different.

But — having recommended the exhibit, I do have to backtrack, in one respect: when did museums get so dang expensive? In our case, we were able to take advantage of a corporate membership which covered the cost of general admission for four of us, but we had to pay the upcharge for the The Greeks exhibit, plus the 5th admission. Had we not had this, we’d have paid $97 for general admission, or $128 for the family to see the exhibit, which is still less than we’d have paid had we chosen to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibit as well, which would have meant a total of $166. For comparison, a family membership is $145/year — but even a membership only gets basic admission and “free or discounted admission” to special exhibits, with no details on what’s free and what’s discounted, except that the Teracotta Warriors exhibit isn’t discounted at all: members pay the full upcharge from general admission.

It’s also an irritant that the museum makes it hard to figure out what the basic admission charge even is — as you stand in line (a half hour in our case) monitors highlight their special exhibits, and provide the rates for the two most expensive admission packages only, and I became convinced that a part of the reason why the line was so long was that each customer had to ask what the costs were without the packages, taking longer than if they’d been able to just march up and say, “two adults, three children for general admission, please.” Though, admittedly, it feels like increasingly much of the exhibit space is taken up by specially-ticketed exhibits. And that cost doesn’t even include the $22 parking garage (which is still cheaper than taking the train in) or the overpriced cafeteria (because they removed the McDonald’s to replace it with their own $8 burgers).

And the Field Museum isn’t even as bad as the Museum of Science and Industry, which is $18/$11 for general admission, but this doesn’t include the Coal Mine, or the U-505, or several new or visiting exhibits, each of which adds an extra $9 to the ticket price, as does an Imax movie. What’s more, some years ago, we had a membership, and I found it to be reasonably priced, but now, even members have to pay for the special exhibits (and, mind you, the Coal Mine had never been a “special exhibit”) and only get a $1 discount.

Am I just too stingy? After all, the pricing’s not that much different than if we’d gone to a (comparatively expensive) restaurant (and the kids order off the adult menu) followed by an evening, 3D movie (though we try to stick with matinees, unless it’s a rare date night). Perhaps I’m just spoiled by the EUR 11 admission to the Deutsches Museum, and the similarly cheap prices elsewhere (and I’m really looking forward to the British Museum — free! — this summer).

(Images: my own photographs)

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