The Juliobona Museum, Gallo-Roman Museum of Lillebonne, is hosting a temporary classical culture exhibition entitled "Who are you, Apollo? From Juliobona to pop culture". The event, open to visitors from April 15 to November 30, 2023, celebrates the bicentenary of the discovery of the giant bronze statue in Roman Gaul: the "Apollo of Lillebonne," now in the Louvre.
The exhibition explores the figure of Apollo through the prism of reception, tracing the god's journey from his birth in Delos to his latest appearances in contemporary popular culture. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait: the thousand faces of Apollo are all one. To provide a nuanced approach to the god's complexity, the plan chosen for this volume explores and confronts several of these faces, combining thematic and chronological methods with significant loans from the Louvre, BnF, Musée d'Orsay, Musée Carnavalet, regional museums, art galleries, and contemporary artists.
The catalogue that completes the exhibition is a collective work. After a presentation of Apollo, his prerogatives and his family, were put into context in the regional environment of present-day Normandy, where other exceptional Roman statues have been discovered (the Berthouville treasure, the Évreux Apollo, the Évreux Jupiter, and the Briga Mercury), four themes are explored by one (or more) specialist(s) through works from each chronological period (Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern, Contemporary, Present): Apollo the artist, the god's oracular dimension, his dark desires and Apollo the sun.
Finally, four interviews with contemporary artists and authors (Pascal Lièvre, Léo Caillard, Stephen Chappell, and Rachel Smythe) complete this panorama, exploring how Apollo continues to inspire contemporary creation. In this context, a polychrome restitution of the Belvedere Apollo is presented for the first time, thanks to a collaboration with the digital artist Stephen Chappell. The Belvedere Apollo is back in color!
This book offers an original and dense synthesis, richly illustrated, for the general public and specialists. It explores a relatively recent field of academic research (the reception of Antiquity) in France and one rarely presented in European museums. It also provides the first diachronic synthesis devoted to this god. It serves as a reminder, if proof were needed, that Antiquity is still very much part of our everyday lives and provides some keys to understanding its significance.
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