Benaki Museum curator Mara Verykokou guides us through an exhibition that includes more than 300 objects related to the Revolution of 1821 and the movement of Philhellenism in Europe and America from four important private collections: Nikitas Stavrinakis and Evangelias Stavrinaki, Petros Vergos, Apostolos Argyriadis and Stéphan Adler. We shall be asked to decide whether the illustration of the Revolution in the daily life of the West was simply a fashion of the time or something deeper, which expressed the support for the struggle of the Greeks for freedom.

Mara Verykokou joined the Benaki Museum in 2003 as assistant curator of the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Collection and she is currently its acting head. She obtained her MA in History of Art from the University of Aberdeen and her MA in Museum Studies from University College London. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of History and Archaeology, with the thesis subject ‘Exhibition policy and communication in the Benaki Museum from the 1970s to the present (1970-2015) in the context of periodic exhibitions.’ Verykokou has been involved as a member of the research team in various exhibition projects, including “Heaven and Earth; Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections” (National Gallery of Washington 2013-14, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2014, Art Institute of Chicago 2014-15) and participated in the coordination of “Russian Religious Art from Russia to Greece” (Benaki Museum 2017-18). Her current research focuses on the Benaki Museum’s collection of late antique and medieval medical instruments.

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