Toronto, June 15 - August 12: Greek Photography Exhibition

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PRESS OFFICE
EMBASSY OF GREECE
80 MacLaren Street
Ottawa, Ontario K2P 0K6 Canada
Tel:  (613) 232-6796 Fax:  (613) 232-6176
e-mail: [email protected]
Contact: Yiorgos Chouliaras
Royal Ontario Museum
media contacts: Jeff Kostyniuk
Tel: (416) 586-5858
e-mail: [email protected]
or   Francisco Alvarez
Tel: (416) 586-5558
e-mail: [email protected]

ANCIENT AND MODERN GREECE at the ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

Opening on June 15 and running until August 12, 2001 at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Image & Icon: The New Greek Photography presents nearly two hundred images by contemporary Greek photographers who challenge visual stereotypes and explore the relation between a country pursuing innovation and its unique classical inheritance.

As noted by the museum, juxtaposing modern photography with classical art and archaeology is an innovation for the ROM, renowned for its Greek and other collections. The completion of the Bronze Age Greek gallery at the museum, scheduled to re-open in 2003, is supported by Greece and the Greek-Canadian community.

Different versions of the traveling photography exhibition, originated by the Greek Ministry of Culture and organized by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, were presented in Ottawa and in Montreal.

Image & Icon coincides with ROM's major exhibition of the summer, Gift of the Gods: The Art of Wine and Revelry, opening on June 16 in the ROM's main floor Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall and running until October 21, 2001.

Nearly 400 artifacts, mainly from the museum's own collections, tell the 7,000-year story of wine from antiquity to today's southern Ontario. Unlike earlier cultures, where it was reserved for the wealthy and the powerful, "the Greeks democratized wine. Everybody drank wine," says Paul Denis, the exhibition's lead curator.

The major theme of Gift of the Gods: The Art of Wine and Revelry is the image of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine, theatre, cultivation, and perhaps eternal life.

Note to editors: A Stage for Dionysos: Theatrical Space and Ancient Drama, the only Canadian showing of this major exhibition of classical Greek theatre by the Melina Mercouri Foundation is being presented at the Gallery Stratford (tel. 519-271-5271) in Stratford, Ontario until August 19, 2001.

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