Page 23 - Beholding Liberty!

depicting the “School of Athens”, kindly lent by the President of the French National Assembly to the Hellenic Parliament, and on the other, the Chart of Rigas Feraios or Velestinlis, a historic heirloom of the Library of the Hellenic Parliament.
Furthermore, a monumental painting, by Ludovico Lipparini, will be hosted at the Exhibition, in the Hall of the Trophies, for several months (July 2021 – January 2022), as a loan from the Musei Civici of Treviso.
The textual material includes documents, rare books, mainly illustrated publications, political pam- phlets and newspapers, as well as maps related to the Struggle, all drawn from the Special Collections of the Library of the Hellenic Parliament, that recount in a unique manner both the macrohistory, as well as small everyday, but always extremely interesting microstories of the Revolution. A primary po- sition among them is occupied by the historical collection of the Archives of the Greek Regeneration, an impressive body of 38 codices and 10,000 loose manuscripts, dating from the beginning of the Struggle for Independence until the election of Otto, the first “King of Greece” (1821-1832). Included in the Exhibition are a total of 68 records drawn from the Archives of Greek Regeneration, on various topics. At the same time, the smaller in size but unique “family” archives of the Library of the Hellenic Parliament are represented with 13 documents, namely the archives of Ioannis Papadiamantopoulos and Panagiotis & Anagnostis Kopanitsas, and the smaller archive of the member of the Society of Friends, Georgios Lassanis, which shed light on many aspects of the Struggle not hence widely known to the public.
Finally, historic objects, weapons and personal tools of the fighters for freedom could not be absent from the Exhibition, which have given us access to the unrelenting inexorable daily life of the Struggle. At this point, we would like to express our warm thanks to those who inherited the Collection of Vasilis Korkolopoulos and the descendent of the Tombazis Family, Mr. Theodoros Mitrakos.
MUSEOGRAPHIC PLANNING
The museographic study was planned, in order to serve the museological concept in the best possible way, and to foreground the rich available material, using modern museum practices; it was conducted with the flawless collaboration of a specialist in the field of Cultural Management, an external partner, the company Horizon, headed by Mrs Athena Iakovidou, and her collaborators Ermis Papakonstan- tinou, Antonis Tsentas and Iasonas Tsentas – all of whom we thank for their flawless and scholarly collaboration. The main challenge was to ensure a conceptual and spatial itinerary that would permit visitors to enjoy, learn from and interact with the exhibits.
In this direction, a detailed record of the available visual and textual material was initially drawn up: the items were weighed, their dimensions measured and digitalized by the Department of City Library & Library Systems Management and sent for maintenance to the Department of Preservation and Conservation of Printed Material and Works of Art. The museographic study allowed us, months be- fore the actual realization of the Exhibition, to digitally reproduce it, in order to make all the necessary amendments, with a view to ultimately achieve the best possible final outcome.
In the museographic study, the conceptual itinerary of the Exhibition was determined in detail; it be- gins from the Peristyle and, with appropriate visual markings (e.g. banners, emblems, vignettes etc.), it leads the visitor up the impressive marble stairway, to the Venizelos Hall on the first floor, in which the itinerary is dictated by the cyclical form of the monumental wall paintings. In the Hall of the Adjutants,
Beholding Liberty through unique exhibits at the Hellenic Parliament 23