On 21 February 2024, the Hermitage’s Volunteer Service conducted a festive programme entitled “Invitation to the Symposium” speciallyfor the museum’s tour guides.
The volunteers prepared the event as part of a major project devoted to Ancient Greek culture, and also in advance of the upcoming inclusive festival “Art in Feelings. Ancient Vases”/
The celebration was held in collaboration with the Hermitage’s School Centre. Its pupils devised a congratulatory video and filmed it for the guides, while Natalia Vorobyeva of the Centre’s staff greeted the participants on behalf of her colleagues.
During the theatricalized symposium-feast, the tour guides were asked to divide into two teams, dedicated to Apollo and Dionysus, and take a series of tests that required them to remember the rules for holding symposia, as well as the Ancient Greek and Latin languages.
The participants were helped to perform their tasks by the feast’s master-of-ceremonies, a role taken by Mikhail Kozhukhovsky, head of the Sector for Work with Volunteers, and students of the Classical Department of Saint Petersburg University. Following the rules for composing hymns, the symposiarchs dressed in ancient costume (one for each team) addressed festive speeches to their divine patrons – Dionysus and Apollo.
Then the teams formed tableaux vivants based on subjects in the murals of the Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting and, with the aid of Dmitry Yesakov from the Information Technologies Sector and VR googles, located those same episodes on the walls of the gallery.
At the end of the feast, the tour guides were invited to play a game traditional for symposia – kottabos: to think of a wish and pronounce it in a classical language. As a souvenir of the occasion, each participant was given a dish that the volunteers had painted with motifs from the Hermitage’s collection of ancient ceramics.
