HELBI

A number of exhibits from the Athens Museum of Cycladic Art had an uneventful journey to Beijing's Forbidden City on April 3 for the first exhibition of archaeological treasures during Greece's Cultural Year in China. Thirty-six ancient objects - marble statuettes, clay pots, copper and stone tools, dating from the end of the 4th and the 3rd millennium BC from the collections of the Goulandris collection and the National Archaeological Museum - went on show at the Beijing Art Museum (until May 15) at a ceremony held by Greek Ambassador in Beijing Michalis Kambanis, the Cycladic Art Museum's director, Professor Nikos Stambolidis, and the director of the Beijing Museum Fu Shuming, in the presence of China's Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Hongbo. As the Greek ambassador pointed out, it was particularly moving that the exhibition was held so shortly after the death of Dolly Goulandris, who had so strongly supported it. Among the exhibits is a model of the Aegean archipelago that, as Stambolidis explained, poets once likened to stone horses emerging from the waves, and which were named after the daughters of Poseidon, the god of the sea: Naxos, Paros, Thera, Myconos and Delos. The ancient Greeks called these islands the Cyclades, as they believed they formed a circle around Delos, the birthplace of Apollo. These statuettes and other objects bear silent witness to one of the most important ancient civilizations, dating from 3200 to 2000 BC. Of fine white marble, they depict men and women, either likenesses of gods, goddesses or ordinary mortals, as an offering to the gods or to honor the dead. They were the inspiration for many of the great artists of the 20th century, such as Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi and Giacometti.