Islanders, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

 

The exhibition starts with a boat: a stunning bronze model from around 1000 BCE, found in Sardinia. Does the catalogue help? “The side columns and the central mast probably represent stylized versions of Nuragic towers … the boat is a powerful reminder that the characteristic Nuragic structures were not only visible throughout the island but also a powerful cultural symbol”. Here is a reference to the best-known prehistoric remains from Sardinia, the temple-like nuraghei, but the assumption seems to be that you knew what these were already. And if you look them up, the Nuraghi don’t look like this boat. The curator’s introduction states “[this boat] provides a unique example of the importance of the seafaring, trade and communication that the large islands of the Mediterranean developed in the Bronze Age and beyond, and the way these practices are symbolically reflected in the creation of material culture.” The boat certainly looks unique, but I don’t think the description captures the sheer magic of the object. And how is it unique? It’s not the only prehistoric representation of a boat. But it does have the features of a mythical creature, and that might be worth exploring. 

Sadly, the exhibition doesn’t go in that direction. The catalogue refers to a documentary, asking people on the Greek island  of Siphnos about what it means to be an islander (although there is nothing from Siphnos in this show).   

That seems to sum up the exhibition as a whole. Islanders was an enjoyable, well displayed, but one that raised more questions than answers. To be honest, my knowledge of which of the ancient civilizations of Sardinia, Crete and Cyprus came first is not very secure – and it’s no better after this exhibition. The display was thematic, and although many of the pieces were exquisite or tantalising, or both, the exhibition didn’t set out to place all these pieces in context. 

So, for example, in the exhibition itself there was a timeline – but only of fragments of pottery, not for the exhibition as a whole. There was nothing to tell you when each civilization started or ended. It was revealing, after leaving the exhibition, to visit the Fitzwilliam Cyprus gallery, just a few hundred metres from this exhibition, and from which several of the exhibition objects had been removed, to find that the captions in the museum’s permanent collection were more informative, with helpful panels outlining the major phases of Cypriot prehistory. It would have been very simple to replicate that information in the exhibition.

So many questions left unanswered! Why these three Mediterranean islands, Sardinia, Crete and Cyprus, and not others? Why not Sicily, in the middle of them? There was, most likely a project that led to this exhibition, but it wasn’t apparent to me from looking around the exhibition what the project involved. The Fitzwilliam website page for this exhibition stated: “Both the exhibition and research project, together with corresponding public engagement actions and outputs, aim to elucidate what defines island identities in the Mediterranean.” Well, there’s precious little sign of that in this exhibition. 

Is this show about artistic quality, or about the civilizations involved? If the show is archaeological, it could of course be a bit of both, but the purpose, at least, should be stated. The catalogue contains entries for less than a  third of the objects in the exhibition, as far as I can see. 

Is the show about the interaction of islands? I remember a wonderful book, Art of the Islands: Celtic, Pictish, Anglo–Saxon and Viking Visual Culture, c.450–1050, by Michelle Brown, which pulled together art of the period that is usually treated separately. So much of the art was in common between England, Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia, that it made sense to look at the art together. Was the same technique applied to this show, and, specifically, to Sardinia? I seem to remember a caption that stated although there were plenty of objects found in Sardinia that had clearly been traded from other islands in the Mediterranean, there was little evidence of genuine mingling of cultures. 

The exhibition was unequal in coverage. It looked to me as if the majority of objects were from Cyprus, which matched the substantial holdings in the Fitzwilliam of Cypriot art, with less from Sardinia, and I noticed very little art from Crete. Of the objects illustrated in the catalogue, 31 were found in Cyprus, 14 in Sardinia, and 11 in Crete. The larger pieces tended to be from Cyprus, so these objects were more noticeable. The exhibition was in no way a rounded coverage of any of these islands’ prehistory. 

When I turned to the catalogue, the essays included one about “compost … a tool and a philosophical instrument that functions like an open-format performative lens toward knowledge production that shakes up pre-established, anthropocentric hierarchies and undermines language as a preconceived form of signification and, therefore, power.” This text precedes a timeline, which I finally discovered buried in the catalogue after all the essays. However, this timeline equates common names such as “Bronze Age” as the same for each of the three islands, even though it states that the Bronze Age began in 3000 BCE for Crete, in 1800 BCE for Sardinia, and 2500 BCE for Cyprus. Not, in other words, very helpful. 

Finally, and unexplained, there were ravishing colour photos on the walls of the rooms showing Mediterranean views. They were enough to make you want to book your holiday immediately, but they appeared to have little connection with the exhibition. I thought these photos were just to set the scene (it wasn’t even clear what the photos were about  - one caption listing all the photos appears just before the exit), like the sea sounds you could hear as you entered the exhibition.   

So I am left with memories of several strange, evocative figures. What were they for? What did they represent? These are the things that will remain with me; not the compost.