The Walters Art Museum and the Hopkins Hellenic Students Association co-hosted an evening at the museum in celebration of the renowned Archimedes Palimpsest Exhibition, Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes, last Thursday. Attendance was limited to sixty prominent attendees — influential Baltimorians and powerful members from the Greek community from across the nation.
The event began with William Noel, Archimedes Project Director and Walters Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books, welcoming the guests and leading them to watch a short video and then go on a guided tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition features texts contained within The Archimedes Palimpsest procured by conservation and imaging efforts, which researchers at the Walters began in 1999. It chronicles the route of uncovering the texts and the unearthing of Archimedes' mathematical genius, illustrating that Archimedes discovered the mathematics of infinity, mathematical physics and combinatorics.
"What have we discovered that today pushes the boundaries of mathematics? Nothing. What we have discovered, what we have rewritten, is the history of mathematics," Noel said.
To enhance the appeal of The Archimedes Palimpsest, Hopkins junior George Petrocheilos, president of the Hopkins Hellenic Student Association, collaborated with Greek-American Baltimore philanthropist and museum patron Anna Pappas to liven up the exhibition and peak the interest of college students, professors, families, children and Baltimorians.
"I believe in my culture. We have the best museum in Maryland and one of the best on the east coast, [featuring an exhibit on] Archimedes. I'm not going to let this go. I used all of my personal network to make this happen," Petrocheilos said.
Petrocheilos, together with Pappas, was in charge of the organization and publicity for the event but stressed that he never did anything alone.
"[Petrocheilos] very much understands that it takes a community to make something happen like a museum exhibition. It takes more than one person; it is a community effort. He really put it all together by collecting the right people to come and enjoying this evening together," Andrea Vespoint, Community Outreach Chair of the Walters, said. Vespoint also helped spearhead the event.
The exhibition event drew a high profile crowd to the Walters that evening. The guest list included Congressman John Sarbanes, City Council Candidate Jason Filippou and Former Maryland Secretary of Business and Economic Development Aris Melissaratos, among many others.
Petrocheilos cited Melissaratos as a primary inspiration throughout the process of planning for this event.
"He didn't only fund all of our projects for the HSA, but he also became my personal mentor. He became like a father-figure to me in Baltimore," Petrocheilos said.
Melissaratos played a crucial role in helping Petrocheilos establish connections with the Baltimore Greek Community in order to bring a meaningful crowd to the event.
"The Walters did a great job by allowing me to be there and represent the Greek community and helping me bring the best ambassadors of the Greek community in Baltimore, DC, Pennsylvania and Chicago. That's what I liked about this exhibition. The approach of the Walters: we want the Greeks there, we want the Greeks to play a major part in it [and] we want the Johns Hopkins students to play a major part in it," Petrocheilos said.
A unique aspect of the exhibition is the integration of technology, art and history. Technology played a major role in the exhibition because of all the work that has gone into uncovering the journey that the palimpsest underwent.
Archimedes acquired his legendary reputation for running down the streets of Syracuse in the third century B.C. exclaiming ‘Eureka!' but his true prestige lies in him being the founder of modern physics. He wrote the treatise The Method of Mechanical Theorems, which centers on the concept of absolute infinity, and the Archimedes Palimpsest contains the only surviving copy of this treatise.
In Constantinople in the 10th century, an anonymous scribe copied Archimedes' treatise onto parchment; however, in the 13th century, a monk erased the Archimedes text, cut the pages and created a Greek Orthodox prayer book with the parchment, a process known as palimpsesting. The Archimedes text then ran horizontally and the prayers ran vertically. The manuscript was then lost for centuries.
Biblical scholar Constantin von Tischendorf first found a leaf of the manuscript at the Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher in 1844, and in 1906, Johan Ludvig Heiberg discovered the manuscript. He travelled to the Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher and uncovered that it contained Archimedes treatises.
"At the Board of Directors meeting in June," they said,
‘We have a book, and no one would care to come for more than two minutes to see a book.' What did we say with Ms. Pappas? Focus on technology, on the high-tech procedures and methods of your technicians, the geniuses you have back there in your labs, used to reveal the Archimedes legacy. That is the point: to combine a two thousand year old document with technology, with innovation, with the high-tech techniques of 2011, which only the Walters has," Petrocheilos said.
Overall, the fusion of the science attributed to uncovering the texts into the exhibition provides a rare, unique perspective and has sparked great interest among audiences.
"Kids are loving [the scientific aspects of the exhibition]. It's having a wider appeal to a wider audience," Vespoint said.
The exhibition will be open to the public at the Walters until Jan. 1, 2012.
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