Aphrodite Exhibition Curator Talk

Dr Anja Ulbrich is giving a curator talk at the Ashmolean Museum on Saturday 17 October, from 2pm to 3pm. She's the A.G. Leventis Curator of the Ashmolean's Cypriot Collection, and the talk takes place in the Headley Lecture Theatre. It's one of those sessions where the person who actually put the show together walks you through it, rather than a general tour.

The talk accompanies Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess, which opened on 8 October and runs until 11 April 2027. The exhibition brings together archaeology, sculpture, painting, contemporary art and fashion to trace Aphrodite's journey from her earliest origins in the eastern Mediterranean, through the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, via Renaissance Europe and right up to the present. It follows how a goddess worshipped in ancient Cyprus became one of the most enduring and recognisable figures in human history, with more than 150 objects spanning over 5,000 years.

Among those objects are a Hellenistic clay statue of Aphrodite found in Kerch, a Venus by Sandro Botticelli from around 1490, Yves Klein's Blue Venus (1962) and Michelangelo Pistoletto's Venus of the Rags (1974). Seeing them all in one place lets you track the shift from ancient cult image to Renaissance icon and then into the modern art world, with the talk giving you the context to tie those jumps together.

The session is part of the museum's Love & Legacy season, which links its wider collections to the exhibition through talks, workshops and events exploring ancient myths of love and beauty. If you can't make it in person, the talk is also streaming online via Zoom. Tickets are £10, and it runs from 2pm to 3pm in the Headley Lecture Theatre.