When we imagine the curation of antiquities, especially classical antiquities, we usually think of preserving the past within museums and other cultural institutions. But we rarely ask what we are preserving, and why, and for whom. The language of the classical has value built into it, so what would it mean to take our relationship with ‘classical’ antiquity as itself an object of curation? And in rethinking how communities have taken shape around the valuation of antiquity, how might we recognise and sustain new communities around the critical and creative engagement with the ancient Greco-Roman world? In this episode, Shivaike Shah speaks to Professor Brooke Holmes of Princeton University about the exhibition project Liquid Antiquity, on which she collaborated with Polina Kosmadaki and Yorgos Tzirtzilakis for the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art in 2017. Shivaike and Brooke discuss the exhibition’s driving questions and examine the fundamental issue of how we may relate to a past that, by its nature, does not survive.

To find out more about this topic, check out the reading list on our website: https://www.khameleonproductions.org/khameleon-classics/liquid-antiquity