Acropolis Museum (AM)

The Acropolis Museum (www.theacropolismuseum.gr) is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built to house every artefact found on the rock and on its feet, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Greece. It also lies on the archaeological site of Makrygianni and the ruins of a part of Roman and early Byzantine Athens. The museum is located by the southeastern slope of the Acropolis hill, on the ancient road that led up to the "sacred rock" in classical times. Set only 280 meters (310 yd), as the crow flies, away from the Parthenon, and a mere 400 meters (440 yd) walking distance from it, the museum is the largest modern building erected so close to the ancient site, although many other buildings from the last 150 years are located closer to the Acropolis.

The museum was founded in 2003 while the Organisation of the Museum was established in 2008. It opened to the public on June 21, 2009. Nearly 4,000 objects are exhibited over an area of 14 000 square metres. The Organisation for the Construction of the new museum is chaired by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Professor Emeritus of Archaeology, Dimitrios Pandermalis. Today, the new Acropolis Museum has a total area of 25,000 square meters, with exhibition space of over 14,000 square meters, ten times more than that of the old museum on the Hill of the Acropolis. The new Museum offers all the amenities expected in an international museum of the 21st century. The museum attracted more than 1 million visitors in the first few months of operation, between June and October 2009.

Acropolis Museum people

Prof. Dimitrios Pandermalis is Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 1979. He has served as President of the Historic and Archaeological Department and Dean of the School of Philosophy and has given presentations and lectures in Classical Archaeology at an international level. Since 1973 he is the Director of archaeological excavations of the Aristotle University in Dion, where he coordinated projects aspiring to transform the area into an archaeological and environmental park. Between September 1996 and March 2000 he was a member of the Greek Parliament, while in March 2000 he was appointed Director of the Construction Project Team of the New Acropolis Museum. Since June 2009 he is the President of Board of Directors of the New Acropolis Museum.

Niki Dollis holds a Degree in Social Work from the University of Melbourne (1980), Australia and has a Public Relations Certificate from the University of Deakin, Australia (2008). With over 20-years experience in the fields of health, education, immigration and welfare in state, local and federal government, she has worked as a senior manager in a non-governmental organization, as well as a Tribunal Member appointed by the Australian Federal government. She has held key positions involving policy review and analysis, strategic program design and implementation, project, service and human resource management, and tertiary level review of administrative decisions. Since migrating to Greece in 2000 she worked initially for the Construction Authority for the new Acropolis Museum with a central role in communications and in the preparation for the Museum’s opening and operations, and has since undertaken responsibility for developing and coordinating Museum services.

Stamatia Eleftheratou graduated from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Warsaw, Poland and is a PhD candidate at the University of Athens. She holds the position of Head of the Documentation and Inventory of Ancient Scientific Publications of the First Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and has been a member of the Archaeological Service since 1984. She was head of the archaeological excavations of the so- called “Makriyiannis” plot, associated with the construction of the “Acropolis” Metro station and the new Acropolis Museum. Her research has been published in archaeological journals and she has presented at conferences and lectured in Greece and abroad. Stamatia has also curate a series of archaeological exhibitions in Greece and abroad and was a member of the Museology and Museography Program Working Group responsible for the design of the Acropolis Museum exhibition program with lead responsibility for the Museum’s ground floor exhibition. More recently she heads the archaeological service of the Acropolis Museum, while leading the preparation of the on-site archaeological excavation for public visitation and the design of the site’s exhibition of portable finds.

Laia Pujol Tost was born in Barcelona. She followed undergraduate studies at the University of Bordeaux-I (Maîtrise in Prehistory) and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where she was awarded an European Ph.D. after the achievement of her doctoral research project “Archaeology, museums and computers: semiotic approach to the use of VR for the dissemination of Archaeology in museums”. Prior to being hired as Project Officer at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, she was principal researcher in Heritage and ICT at Tecnalia R&D Foundation in Spain. Before that, she was appointed twice as Marie Curie Fellow at the Museology Lab of the Department of Cultural Informatics of the University of the Aegean, and as British Academy visiting research fellow at the Centre for Museology the University of Manchester. At both places she worked on the evaluation of ICT applications in museums. In between, she was hired by the Centre for the Study of Prehistoric and Archaeological Heritage of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where she developped national and international Cultural Heritage projects involving ICT. She has also been lecturer at the UAB and at the University of Girona, and worked as assistant archaeologist for the Local Architectural Heritage Service of Barcelona. Her research fields are the use and evaluation of ICT applications in museums and Archaeology, in relation to which she has participated in several funded projects and archaeological excavations in France and Spain; she has presented several papers in journals and conferences –two of them awarded by VSMM Society–; and she has chaired international conferences and workshops. She is member of the scientific committee of ACE, TAG and CAA international conferences.

Stavrina Poulou studied archaeology and Arts History at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. In 2007 she obtained at the University of the Aegean an M.Sc. in “Design of digital heritage products”. In 2012 she will complete her Master studies at the Hellenic Open University in the field of “Graphic techniques and Multimedia”. Her research interests are related to the design and implementation of applications for museums and public spaces in which human-computer interaction is accomplished through physical objects (Tangible User Interfaces). She has participated as speaker in seminars, workshops and conferences. From 2006 she collaborates with museums and other public and private cultural institutions in the design of multimedia applications. From 2007 she is appointed at the Archaeological Museums of Nikopolis and Arta, where she designs and implements educational and entertaining multimedia applications based in different kinds of interface and interactivity modes (PDAs, interactive boards, Internet, infokiosks, RFIDs, motion detection). In parallel, she is responsible for the graphic edition (leaflets, panels, books, posters, etc.) and organization of activities at the two aforementioned museums.

Lydia Themeli holds an M.A. in Contemporary European Studies (2003) from Bath University in the UK and Charles University in the Czech Republic and a B.A. majoring in Economics (2002) from the Deree College, the American College of Greece. She has been working at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens since 2004 and has been involved in research proposal writing, events organisation and the technical and financial coordination and management of several EU and nationally funded projects including Encouragement of Young Entrepreneurship (KPSIII EPEAEK II), DELOS Network of Excellence (IST FP6), BRICKS Integrated Project (IST FP6), KATOPTRON, Health-e- Child Integrated Project (IST FP6), TELplus Targeted Project (ECP FP6) , BELIEF Specific Support Action (IST FP6), BELIEF II Coordination Action (INFRA FP7), PAPYRUS Collaborative Project (ICT FP7), SemsorGrid4Env Collaborative project (ICT FP7), TELEIOS Collaborative Project (ICT FP7) and Chess Collaborative Project (ICT FP7). She has also been involved in FP7 project management and research in the Athena Research and Innovation Center since 2009 and the Acropolis Museum since 2011.

Vagelis Stournaras studied Social Anthropology, Cultural Administration and Cultural Informatics. He also holds a diploma in web design and front-end programming and has worked for many cultural institutions in Greece. He is currently working for the banking sector, in the digital entrepreneurship field.  He is always curious about semantics, human-computer interactions, and organizational change.