The Byzantine and Christian Museum participated as partner in the EU-funded project within the Creative Europe Framework, entitled as “Connecting Early Medieval European Collections (CEMEC)”, aiming to create a collaborative network and an effective management model of travelling museum exhibitions. The CEMEC consortium involved seven European Museums, Universities and technical partners (https://www.cemec-eu.net/partners.php). The Allard Pierson Museum in association with the University of Amsterdam were the project΄s coordinators. 

The emergence of cultural relations across the European continent and the Mediterranean Basin and aspects of first millennium people΄s cultures from Ireland to Egypt and from Spain to Persia were the key objectives of the scope of the travelling exhibition that was carried out and presented during the CEMEC project. Actually, three major exhibitions based on the same museum exhibits, but with a different emphasis and museological perspective each time, took place in three cities (Amsterdam, Athens and Bonn) within CEMEC project- until September 2019. 

The first exhibition “Crossroads: traveling through Middle Ages” was presented at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, emphasizing on cultural exchanges and mobility during the first millennium. In the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens the exhibition entitled “Byzantium and the Others in the First Millennium: An Empire of stability in a turbulent era” highlighted the role of the Byzantine Empire, between 300-1000 AD, as a pole of stability in a period of great uncertainties and conflicts (upheavals and reversals) in the European world as well as in the broader Mediterranean area. In the LVR-LandesMuseum in Bonn, the exhibition “Europa in Bewegung. Lebenswelten im frühen Mittelalter” (“Europe on the Move. A Journey through the Early Middle Ages”) was presented featuring the raids of the German tribes across the western and north-western borders of the Roman Empire, and the establishment of new kingdoms, as those of the Huns, the Franks and Ostrogoths. 

The fruitful cooperation of the Art and History Museum in Brussels with CEMEC consortium led to the decision for the CEMEC exhibition “Crossroads: travelling through Middle Ages” to be presented in Brussels after the completion of the project 

(https://www.artandhistory.museum/exhibitions/crossroads). 

Finally, among the most significant contributions of the CEMEC project was the innovative proposal of the IT use in a museum context, in order to enhance the visitors΄ experience. Digital content like video, 3D presentations and animations were integrated into the exhibition course, not as rivals to the exhibits, but as their complements, in order to raise their original function within the cultural environment of their creation era. 

For more information you could visit the CEMEC project΄s website:

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