Konstantina Zanou presents her new project about the fascinating lives of two brothers, Luigi and Alessandro Palma di Cesnola (1832–1904 and 1840–1914).
In that framework, she will lecture on”Fragmented lives, reassembled statues: The Cesnola brothers and the birth of Archaeology” in the 5th. lecture of the University of Cyprus Archaeological Research Unit.
Born in Piedmont but traveled all around the world, the Cesnola brothers transformed themselves from military men into diplomats, and from explorers and gold diggers into professional archaeologists and forgers of antiquities. Of them, Luigi, by then resident in New York, also became the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first and longest-serving director (1879-1904).
Zanou’s research on the Cesnola brothers is a project that combines biography with cultural, economic, and political history, in order to study the emergence of archaeology at the intersection of nationalism, imperialism, war, adventurism, and financial speculation, and to explore the elusive frontier between the fictive and the authentic in its foundation as a scientific discipline.
The lecture is part of the public lectures series organized by the Archeology Research Unit of the University of Cyprus for the Winter Semester 2020.
The lectures will be held online and will be broadcast live only via Zoom (without physical presence).
All online lectures are open to the public; to register, click here.
*After registering, the prospective attendees will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.