A Conversation with Kiki Karoglou, Curator of Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art at the Met Fifth Avenue until February 24, 2019
Kiki Karoglou joined the department in 2011. She previously taught at the University of Toronto and The College of New Jersey, and held graduate internships at the Getty Research Institute, the Princeton Art Museum, and the Athens Acropolis Museum. Kiki received her PhD in classical art and archaeology from Princeton University and has participated in numerous archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean. Kiki contributed to the exhibition Pergamon: Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World (April 11–July 17, 2016) and organized the department’s current exhibition Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art (February 5, 2018–February 24, 2019).
Selected Publications:
Karoglou, Kiki. Attic Pinakes: Votive Images in Clay. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010.
———. “Eros Mousikos.” In Representations of Musicians in the Coroplastic Art of the Ancient World: Iconography, Ritual Contexts, and Functions, edited by A. Bellia and C. Marconi, 97–107. TELESTES. Studi e Ricerche di Archeologia musicale nel Mediterraneo II. Pisa-Roma: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2016.
“Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 75.3 (Winter, 2018).
from MEET THE STAFF at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Exhibition Overview Beginning in the fifth century B.C., Medusa—the snaky-haired Gorgon whose gaze
turned men to stone—became increasingly anthropomorphic and feminine, undergoing a visual transformation from grotesque to beautiful. A similar shift in representations of other mythical female half-human beings—such as sphinxes, sirens, and the sea monster Scylla—took place at the same time. Featuring sixty artworks, primarily from The Met collection, this exhibition explores how the beautification of these terrifying figures manifested the idealizing humanism of Classical Greek art, and traces their enduring appeal in both Roman and later Western art.
The connection between beauty and horror, embodied above all in the figure of
Medusa, outlived antiquity, fascinating and inspiring artists through the centuries. Medusa became the archetypical femme fatale, a conflation of femininity, erotic desire, violence, and death. Along with the beautiful Scylla, she foreshadows the conceit of the seductive but threatening female that emerges in the late nineteenth century in reaction to women’s empowerment.
from CURRENT EXHIBITIONS at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
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CLICK HERE for more about Dangerous Beauty.