New Exhibition Showcases 130 Years of the Academic Program
Photos and documents from the American School’s academic program are on view in the Basil Room of the Gennadius Library through September 30th. The cases display large mounted posters outlining the most important events in the history of the American School and Greece, like the Balkan Wars, the Asia Minor Disaster, even the devaluation of the drachma in 1953. Also on view are many photos and other memorabilia devoted exclusively to the history of the academic program. In addition, a video installation streams short film clips for each of the School’s decades through 1970, and a Super 8-format movie by Jon Mikalson shows the class of 1968–69 on the road. Going through the exhibition, one learns that the School did not have an organized program of trips from the very beginning, but relied heavily on the trips that William Doerpfeld of the German Archaeological Institute offered every year.  The retirement of Doerpfeld in 1908 forced the American School to organize two trips in its academic program: the Southern Trip (a.k.a the Peloponnesian trip) and the Northern Trip. The latter, however, did not include either Thessaly or Macedonia, since those areas were under Ottoman rule until 1913. Even after their liberation, the School did not incorporate Macedonia into its program until 1960, under the initiative of Director Henry S. Robinson. The exhibit is full of photos from trips that the members of the School took throughout its long history.  The exhibit puts a lot of emphasis on the history of the fellowships, beginning with the establishment of the first two in 1895–96: one for studies in archaeology and one for studies in literature and history, to be awarded on the basis of examinations. Samples of the examinations that the students took in 1901, as well as later in 1924 are shown. In the early 1920s the American School went one step further by establishing a new program—the Summer Session—a 5 to 6 week abridged version of its full program, which targeted a larger pool of participants, including high-school teachers.  The Summer Session program became so popular that in 1968 the School doubled it, introducing two Summer Session programs every summer. Photos and notebooks from the Summer Sessions feature in the exhibit. The last part of the exhibit is dedicated to traveling, boarding and lodging. Traveling in Greece was never easy in the early years of the School’s operation. The hotels were infested with fleas to the point that the students had to use sleeping bags which they tied around their necks.  Here is a quote from a letter that one student wrote to his parents in 1895: “Last night was a profitable night, for I learned how to use a sleeping-bag. I first tried fastening it around my neck but the bugs soon got to work above the line. The only proper way to use the thing is to draw it over your head so that only nose and mouth project.” The exhibit stops at 1980 for a couple of reasons: one is space, the other is the 30-year rule that we have imposed on the institutional records of the School. Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan designed and curated the exhibit, and Eleftheria Daleziou prepared the short videos.