Several folks have asked me why I haven't devoted some space to the Worshiping Women exhibition running at the Onassis Cultural Center from December 10 to May 9. My excuse is that I have been collecting the links to reviews and the like and planned to present them en masse (turns out there are really only three reviews, with Verena Dobnik's AP review being included in many a newspaper across the continent). And just to clarify the ambiguity of the title of the exhibition a quote from the curators:

“If all Greek religion was about creating and maintaining a state of harmony between mortals and gods, then the role of Athenian women was an integral part of that process. It was women’s essential contribution to share equally in securing and maintaining the divine favor that made Athens great.”

• Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens (Page at the OCC)

Holland Carter remarks in the New York Times:

Despite this and other illustrations of female agency in ancient Athens, it would be a mistake to argue that the lot of women there was, after all, a fair deal. The record stands: no citizenship, no vote, little or no control over the use made of your time or your body. But the show is not making that argument. Instead it is using art to survey where, within a system of institutionalized restriction, areas of freedom for women lay.

By doing so it makes a valuable, if by now no longer entirely novel, contribution to classical studies. And it presents art with a thematic focus, a historical tact and a relevance to the present that our museums — I am thinking particularly of the Met, with its beautiful but blandly generalizing Greek and Roman galleries — can learn a lot from. As can we. In ancient Athens, as in contemporary America, true democracy was always an ideal, never a fact.

• The Glory That Was Greece From a Female Perspective (NY Times)


Other reviews:

• NY exhibit unveils women's lives in ancient Greece (Verena Dobnik/AP)
• Show celebrates role of women in ancient Greece (San Francisco Chronicle; Verena Dobnik/AP)
• 'Worshiping Women' exhibit in New York City examines role of females in ancient Greece (Star Tribune; ditto)
• NY exhibit unveils women's lives in ancient Greece (NPR; ditto, but with good photos)
• Worshipping Women: Classical Athens’ Ritual And Reality (Epoch Times; Rosemarie Fruehauf)


... and I got through all that without mentioning the problem I have with spelling "Worshiping" with only one "p".