Bringing Color to Greek Antiquity: Polychrome Art and the Parthenon

The Athenaeum is excited to present Katherine Schwab, PhD, an expert in the authentic aesthetics and representations of ancient Greek sculpture. Schwab will explore the evidence for color on ancient Greek sculpture and the use of both new and old technologies to aid our understanding of their original polychromatic appearance. The loss of original paint has skewed our cultural memory of all Greek statuary. Schwab will focus on a few of the original Parthenon metopes, or marble panels, that displayed major mythological battles above the Doric columns on all four sides of the Parthenon. Technical achievements that have led to a better understanding of these compositions will be shown in Schwab’s drawings and through virtual reality.