A Day In Pompeii @ SDNHM

Since so many books, educational videos and museum exhibitions have already covered the topic, what makes A Day in Pompeii different?

For different reasons, traveling exhibitions have been quite fashionable these last couple of years. For instance, 2 Pompeii exhibitions are traveling the world currently. The first one is drawn from the collections of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, has traveled since 2003 in Europe, Asia and North America and is currently presented at the Museum of Fine Art, Houston under the name Pompeii, Tales from an Eruption. The second one is a collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei, which has been to the Mobile Gulf’s Coast Exploreum and the Science Museum of Minnesota in 2007, is currently in San Diego, and will finally travel to Discovery Place in Charlotte, NC.

I’ve only seen the San Diego exhibition so far, but here’s my 2 cents on the pros and cons of this exhibition if compared with some old school European permanent exhibitions.

• A day in Pompeii is very good if you know little about roman history since it will explain different facets of daily life and does synchronize the city chronologically with the rest of roman history.
• This exhibition is also very poignant as it shows body casts of volcano’s victims.
• A good deal of room-size frescoes, sculptures, jewelry,… and even a carbonated bread are exhibited to evoke the richness and daily life in Pompeii, yet the quality of these samples is unimpressive compared to what archaeologists have dug in the past.

In any case, you should visit that exhibition in the next couple of weeks as it will be our next discussion group topic, March, 20th from 5pm to 7pm at Bassam Coffee Shop. May you wish to listen to the Audio Tour, the link is there.

Above is a stereoview depicting the Stabienne Street, one of Pompeii’s commercial street back then.