2024-25 | Reconstructing the 1936 BSA Exhibition using the Ashmolean’s Sir Arthur Evans Archive

This project aims to digitise and present archival materials from a major London exhibition organised by the British School at Athens (BSA) in 1936. While the BSA holds the majority of the original exhibition panels, the Ashmolean Museum’s objects were included in the exhibition. Additionally, it will include objects from the Sir Arthur Evans Archive, which contains unpublished display materials such as photographs and drawings from the Minoan Room of the exhibition. For the first time, this project will make the contents of the Minoan Room digitally available and reconstruct the exhibition room on an interactive web publication. A workshop held 28 May 2025 in Oxford will launch the digital publication, with a parallel BSA publication, in order to bring together a network of scholars interested in the history of the BSA and the reception of pre-war archaeological exhibitions.

History of the 1936 Exhibition
At the fiftieth anniversary of the BSA, Sir Arthur Evans and other prominent archaeologists of the BSA, including Sir John Myres, Alan Wace, W.A. Heurtley, and Winifred Lamb, put on the exhibition titled 'British Archaeological Discoveries in Greece and Crete 1886 to 1936' at Burlington House in London. This exhibition highlighted the BSA as a preeminent archaeological research centre by displaying objects, drawings, photographs, and architectural plans from the excavations at Knossos, Sparta, Thermi (Lesbos), Melos, Perachora, and Mycenae. For Sir Arthur Evans, excavator of the Bronze Age site of Knossos from 1900–1931, it was a chance to fully exhibit his Minoan civilisation exhibits to the public in the North Room and align it with the work occurring throughout the BSA. The Ashmolean Museum lent the exhibition many archaeological objects. Some of these and the illustrative materials related to the exhibition can now be identified and brought together to ‘reconstruct’ the exhibition digitally. 

Furthermore, the BSA has recently catalogued its own holdings of the 1936 Exhibition and this collaborative project enables both institutions to unite their findings to more fully understand the exhibition’s holdings and its historical significance. By bringing the BSA and Ashmolean materials together digitally and in conversation in the workshop, this project investigates the experience and narrative storytelling of the 1936 Exhibition, as well as analyses and reinforces the strong connections between these two historically intertwined institutions.

This project is run by Dr. Andrew Shapland (Sir Arthur Evans Curator of Bronze Age and Classical Greece at the Ashmolean Museum) and team members include Amalia Kakissis, (Archivist at the British School at Athens), Renée Trepagnier (CDP doctoral student at the University of Bristol and the Ashmolean Museum), and Charlotte Townsend (BSA Archive Researcher and MARM student at University of Liverpool).

Researchers Involved: 

Andrew Shapland: https://www.ashmolean.org/people/andrew-shapland.

Renée Trepagnier: https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/creating-the-first-europeans.