BOSTON – His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America will inaugurate the exhibition ‘The Greek Revolution through American Eyes’ at the Maliotis Cultural Center of Hellenic College/Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It will remain up at the Maliotis Cultural Center until October 15, 2021. The exhibition is a Digital and physical Traveling Exhibition that commemorates the 200th anniversary of the start of the Greek Revolution in 1821 and was created in partnership between the Maliotis Cultural Center and the Dean C. and Zoë S. Pappas Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies of Stockton University in New Jersey. The exhibition will open at Stockton University in Fall 2021.

Directed by Dr. Tom Papademetriou (Stockton University) and Dr. Nicholas Ganson (Hellenic College), the exhibition explores the common themes binding Greece and the United States in Greece’s pursuit of universal freedom and liberty. The physical exhibit is made up of twenty-four panel displays with information researched by sixteen contributing scholars from the United States and Greece whose full essays are included in the Digital exhibit website.  The physical exhibit will tour and be presented in universities and community centers throughout the United States.

The Greek Revolution Through American Eyes explores four themes 1) Freedom or Death: Greece in the Age of Revolutions; 2) Monroe’s Empathy: Rooting for Greek Victory, Forging a Doctrine of Non-Intervention; 3) Greek Fever: American Philhellenes and the Birth of International Humanitarianism; and 4) 400 Years a Slave: Greek unfreedom and American Abolitionism.

The exhibition serves as a dual lens which allows viewers to see the Greek revolutionary events and their significance through the writings and actions of Americans who supported and fought in the war. It also allows viewers to consider the formation of U.S. identity in the first fifty years of the nation’s existence, as foreign policy was taking shape and slavery was leading the country to its own war. 

A Greek version will be created in collaboration with the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, and the Laboratory of Narrative Research at the School of English of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and will be displayed in fall 2021 at the Museum in Thessaloniki and other locations in Greece. Organizations and institutions interested in hosting the exhibit beginning in the summer 2021 may contact the organizers at [email protected].