Kusuma goes to the Acropolis Museum

Hello!!  I am Kusuma Barnett from the British Museum and I have been doing the introductory tour of the galleries for International Training Programme (ITP) fellows since 2006.

This is the first time I have writing for the blog after being part of the ITP for 11 years but I wanted to you tell you about my fantastic visit to Athens in May.

I contacted Panagiota Theodoropoulou– Yolanda – Front Desk Manager at The Acropolis Museum (ITP 2016) to say I was coming and suggested we meet for coffee. She emailed back to say we could come anytime and that Constantinos Vasiliadis, Senior Conservator – Coordinator of the Sculptures Conservation Laboratory (ITP 2014) would also like to come and say hello.

But instead of a quick visit, Yolanda had organised the most amazing day. We had coffee overlooking the Parthenon and Costas joined a little later to introduce us to the collection. He was fantastic and spent nearly 2 hours showing us around the galleries. He brought the whole museum alive to us with his enthusiasm and knowledge. My husband who is a doctor, with not much knowledge of museums, said it was his best museum visit ever. He keeps telling our friends how much he learnt from Costas and how he loved the story of the Caryatids being in nitrogen for over 20 years. Thank you Costas!!

After the tour Yolanda had organised lunch for us at the restaurant where she joined us for lunch, so we could talk and catch up. We had a lot to talk about. Michael and I were very surprised when the Museum’s President, Prof. Dimitrios Pandermalis came and said “Hello” to us during lunch. I am sure Yolanda had something to do with his visit to our table!!

It was a great visit and thank you Yolanda and Costas for making it such a memorable day.