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Those queer Greeks: dialogue at the NGV Queer exhibition

| Queer Antiquities | Ted Gott (NGV) & Bernie Lewin (PAM) in dialogue | 3pm Saturday 20 Aug | Level 3 NGV International (St Kilda Rd) |

Greek vase depicting a symposium (4th century BC)
Greek vase depicting a symposium (4th century BC)

New readers of Plato are often struck by the strange cultural setting of the philosophical discussions, what with all those slaves, so few women and the unmistakably queer male sexual culture.

The term “queer” might be new, but queer culture flourished in many ancient cultures, not the least among the ancient Greeks. NGV Senior Curator Dr Ted Gott invites Bernie Lewin of the Platonic Academy of Melbourne for one last stroll around the exhibition to discuss some of the antiquities and what they evoke of the sometimes charming, sometimes shocking, myths and practices of Europe’s most celebrated cultural ancestors.

NGV website

At Queer Antiquities Ted and Bernie will discuss everything from Sapho’s poetry to Zeus’s abduction of the most beautiful youth, Ganymede. The discussion will feature Plato’s Symposium, with it’s original three genders (in the Aristophanes speech) and Socrates’s dialogue with the priestess of love, Diotima.