The “MitoMania Exhibition–Rediscovering Stories about Men and Heroes” was inaugurated on Wednesday, 10 April 2019 at the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto and was then open for public viewing on the following day. The core of the exhibition consists of a series of precious vases produced in Apulia and attributed to some of the most important Masters of Italiot ceramography. The vases were returned to Italy at the beginning of the 2000s from various overseas museums after investigations by the Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage provided evidence that they came from illicit excavations in Apulia. The exhibition is an occasion to promote knowledge of this extraordinary regional and national archaeological heritage while raising public awareness of the problems connected with its conservation. It is also designed to explore the cultural environment within which the Apulian red-figure ceramics were produced, their uses and symbolic values so as to reconstruct the “lost” contexts to which they belonged. This is why the visit is divided into three sections, dedicated respectively to the funerary ideology and eschatological concepts reflected in the scenes depicted on the vases, to the multifaceted relationship between mythical iconography and the ancient theatre, and finally to the activities of the Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.
A Study Day followed the inauguration of the exhibition on Thursday 11 April 2019 in the Meeting Room of the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto. Together with the military police of the Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, specialists in the field discussed what is currently known about Apulian ceramography and the dispersion of the regional archaeological heritage, provided new insights and focussed on research perspectives in these areas.
Organizing Committee:
Eva Degl’Innocenti (MArTA Director), Anna Consonni, Luca Di Franco, Lorenzo Mancini (Archaeologists MArTA).
Scientific Committee:
Eva Degl’Innocenti (MArTA Director); Anna Consonni, Luca Di Franco, Lorenzo Mancini (Archaeologists MArTA).
MArTA’s Scientific Committee:
Gert-JanBurgers (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Grazia Semeraro (University of Salento) and Vito Labarile; Martine Denoyelle (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art), Caterina Mannino (University of Salento), Angela Pontrandolfo (University of Salerno), Fabrizio Parrulli (Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage), Claude Pouzadoux (Director of the Jean Bérard Center, Naples), Luigi Todisco (University “Aldo Moro” of Bari).
