CSCA Director Frank Salmon delivers lecture on the nature of the Greek Revival at the British Museum

In this lecture, given in memory of curator Ian Jenkins, Frank Salmon will reflect on the nature of the Greek Revival in architecture.  

‘The splendour of human artifice’ is a quotation from Jenkins’ introductory essay to the exhibition The Romance of Ruins: The Search for Ancient Ionia, 1764 (Opens in new window), held at Sir John Soane’s Museum in 2021, on which Jenkins was working at the time of his death. The essay was perhaps his last statement on the subject of Greek architecture.

In this event, Salmon will use the quotation as his starting point in a discussion on the way ancient Greek architecture was understood and then applied to the needs of modern architecture, including in the building of the British Museum itself.