Greece's Benaki museum participates in Museum Selfie Day

By Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- A few years ago museum visitors who dare to take photographs of artwork would get scolded by security personnel in most cases. Nowadays, people are encouraged to use their mobile phones and shoot selfies in front of masterpieces.

In particular during the Museum Selfie Day, a Twitter project launched four years ago, aimed at raising awareness of the great collections housed in museums across the globe.

In central Athens, the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, one of the most significant museums in Greece, located opposite the National Garden and a few steps from the Greek parliament, participated on Wednesday in the 2018 Museum Selfie Day, inviting visitors, as well as curators and administrative staff to snap selfies and share them on social media.

It was the fourth consecutive year the Greek museum joined in the worldwide online campaign, Nikoletta Menti, Head of the museum's Communication department, told Xinhua.

This year ten special selfie spots were created to stay permanently from now on in the galleries of the museum. Signage alongside artworks marks the suitable places where visitors are urged to take selfies and playfully interact with the objects, she explained.

Actually visitors can snap photographs wherever they like, but the particular spots were chosen because of the colorful background and special value of the items on display, such as the 17th century "sperveri" from Rhodes.

"Sperveri" was a kind of tent which hid the bridal bed from prying eyes. The one put on display at the Benaki museum is one of the best preserved of the few surviving examples from the Dodecanese islands.

With a long history behind, the Benaki museum, founded in 1931 and donated to the Greek state the same year, looks to the future and embraces modern channels of communication and trends which help promote its mission to safeguard Greek and world cultural heritage, Menti said.

The museum's twitter, facebook and Instagram accounts were launched a decade ago to bring it closer to younger generations who are more active in social media.

"We have a very strong profile in social media... Users often hashtag us and we see how any times they are photographing items and comment on them, or are snapping photos of themselves and the galleries," she told Xinhua.

"Most people nowadays are mostly getting the information on our activities through Facebook rather than our website," Menti noted.

"The museum certainly strengthens its relationship with the younger visitors this way. Social media are a way of communication and also offer us the opportunity to promote what we wish across the globe and with no financial cost," she added.

Who are the culture enthusiasts who are keen on taking selfies in front of their favorite exhibits and help get the word out about Benaki museum's treasures?

"I would say that mostly adults are snapping selfies, because not all kids have mobile phones," Menti said. Tourists shoot photographs more than Greeks.

Asked what exactly visitors are photographing, she pointed to the museum's rich and diverse collections.

The Benaki museum was created to shelter the collections of its founder Antonis Benakis, scion of one of the leading families of the Greek diaspora, and gradually expanded, as its collections were enriched with many donations from collectors.

Today the Benaki Museum of Greek culture which showcases the development of the Greek culture from prehistory to the 20th century is housed in one of the most beautiful neoclassical-style buildings in the heart of Athens, while other six buildings house unique collections of Islamic art and toys, among others.

The Benaki Museum also has a special link with China. A rich collection of Chinese art containing about 1,300 objects from the 3rd century BC to the 19th century is among its permanent exhibitions.

In the summer of 2017, as Greece and China were celebrating the Year of Cultural Exchanges, the museum also launched an audio guide tour in Chinese among other languages.

"Visitors can get this audio tour to our collections using their mobile phones," Menti explained.

In all the buildings of the Benaki museum curators have chosen special exhibits to narrate their history this way.

"There is a QR code for each item. Visitors can scan it and listen to the object's history on their mobile phones in five languages in addition to Greek: in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese," Menti said, adding that of course there is free wifi in all buildings of the Benaki museum. Enditem