Treasures from the McDonald Hellenic Collection

Or, I Curated a Library Exhibit and I'm Showing It Off

Today on A Reception Collection, I want to share something different from my usual antiquity-in-modern-times beat. It’s still related to the Mediterranean, and I promise it will spark your curiosity!

A Greek left-wing resistance flyer, printed somewhere between 1967 and 1975. ΟΧΙ means “no” in Greek: it’s pronounced “ohee.”

Like many grad students, I’ve been working for pay while I finish my studies. I’m very lucky to work as a research assistant at the Special Collections and Rare Books (SCRB) department in the SFU Library. For the last year and a bit, I’ve been cataloguing and organizing a very special group of archival materials there.

A banner image I made with some archival highlights.

While I was doing this cataloguing work, I found all sorts of interesting objects. They’re now starring in an exhibit, “Live From Athens: Treasures from the McDonald Hellenic Collection.” Here’s an introduction I wrote to the contents of this archive:

I spent the last few months preparing this exhibit, and I’m really proud of myself. I’ve been making little setups all my life, but this is my first time curating something of this calibre, with museum-quality materials! It’s especially thrilling that many of the artifacts date back to a turbulent time in Greek history, from the junta period in the late 60s and early 70s. Working with anti-fascist materials and news coverage of leftist protests makes me feel like I’m working with important fragments of history: it’s also heartening to look back to this part of Greece’s past. The Greek junta imploded in the early 70s, and was fully replaced with a democratic government by 1975. Learning both about a right-wing regime that collapsed and the brave people who fought against that regime is very stirring in this day and age. I enjoy this little reminder that right-wing governments can, do, and will collapse…

One of two display cases with my exhibit.

The McDonald Collection currently lives in about 200 boxes, not organized in any particular way. It took me about a year to go through each and every box. I entered everything I found into a spreadsheet, making a detailed list of the collection’s contents. It’s going to be a long time before the collection is fully curated and easy for researchers to access: however, my work is the first step towards a manageable, user-friendly gathering of archival material. I’m very excited about the future of this collection: I’ll have to keep in touch with the Special Collections team when I head off to library school…

Since this is A Reception Collection, let me show off a couple artifacts that engage with antiquity:

A guide to ancient Greece, with a striking picture of the Acropolis.

Most of the contents of this case concerns Melina Mercouri, a Greek actress and politician who kickstarted a Parthenon Marbles repatriation campaign in the early 1980s. The string of pages on the bottom left are a write-up Robert McDonald wrote after an interview with her, and the newspaper clippings cover her marble activism. This case also features an International Women’s Day poster made by members of the Turkish diaspora in London, and a Greek leftist magazine from the 70s with a Minoan fresco on its cover.

Two Greek anti-government magazines from the early 70s, both with neoclassical imagery on their covers. The blue magazine on the right features a statue of Lord Byron.

If you’re in the Vancouver area between now and the end of August, please consider taking a trip up to Burnaby Mountain to check out my display. It’s in the glass cases on the main floor of the Bennett Library, near the circulation desk. I’d really appreciate if you gave it a look: leave me a comment if you do!

If you can’t make it to the exhibit, fear not. In addition to the photos I’ve shared here, the Special Collections and Rare Books website preserves all their exhibits, so you can enjoy a virtual look at the McDonald Collection’s highlights. I shared the link above, but here it is again.