Visible and Invisible Work
Date: Friday, November 22, 2024
Time: 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Location: Zoom
Please join us the evening of Friday, November 22, 2024 for a lecture by the Director of the Acropolis Restoration Service, Vasiliki Eleftheriou. This event is held in celebration of the opening of the Center’s new exhibition, Chisel and Memory: The contribution of marble craftsmanship to the restoration of monuments, curated by the Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA). It features a selection of prints from the archive of YSMA, which includes over 300,000 objects.
About the Lecture
The Acropolis of Athens is an iconic monumental ensemble, inscribed in the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites List since 1987.
The conservation interventions of the early 20th century, although they are considered very important for the appearance of the monuments today, made use of no-compatible materials that caused several structural problems and imposed the need for a new intervention. Since 1975 the conservation and restoration of the Acropolis monuments have been organized on a scientific basis and in accordance with the ethics deriving from international conventions. The project is carried out by the Acropolis Restoration Service, under the supervision of the Committee for the Conservation of the Acropolis Monuments of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The restoration of the Erechtheion, the Propylaea and the Temple of Athena Nike have been accomplished, while in the Parthenon, in which the works are still under progress, the most serious structural problems have been addressed.
On the occasion of the presentation of the exhibition ‘Chisel and Memory. The contribution of marble craftsmanship to the restoration of monuments’, the lecture focuses on the problems identified in the monuments, the principles, the materials and the methods of the interventions. Selected work will also be presented on the Parthenon, the Propylaea and the Temple of Athena Nike.
Speaker
Vasiliki Eleftheriou is an Architect-Engineer and holds an MSc in the Protection of Monuments from the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens. She works at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. From 1988 to 2005 she was in charge of the restoration works of the Lindos Acropolis and from 2006 to 2011 she has been working at the Acropolis Restoration Service in Athens on the restoration project of the Parthenon. Since December 2011 she has been the Director of the Acropolis Restoration Service.
She has participated in conferences and has contributed several papers on the subject of cultural heritage protection and management. She has also lectured at seminars in universities in Greece (National Technical University of Athens, University of Athens, Technical University of Crete, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and abroad (Columbia University, Yale University, UPenn, Boston University, University of Delaware, Stony Brook University, Polytechnic School of Bari, Konstanz University, Technical University of Munich, University of Basilicata, University Federico II of Naples, MIE University, Sao Paulo University).
She has collaborated with the Greek Archaeological Service and research institutions, including the 22thEphorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, the 4th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, the Archaeological Institute of Aegean Studies, the University of Ioannina, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Free University of Berlin.
She participates in the Committee for the Conservation and restoration of the Monuments of the Acropolis at Lindos, the Committee for the Restoration of the Ancient Theatre of Lindos and the scientific committee of the Journal of Archaeology and Ancient Architecture “Thiasos”, published by the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic School of Bari. She is also a member of the Centre of Literature and the Arts of the Dodecanese, the Panhellenic Union of Architects and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
