Class Discussion #1- Samantha Cantrell

     While I enjoyed visiting both Villa Giulia and the ruins of Pompei, they were vastly different experiences.  Pompei was an incredibly immersive experience that allows visitors to imagine not only the terror experienced by its residents during the tragic volcanic eruption, but also helps to see them as normal people with their own lives and routines.  Viewing artifacts within their actual, practical context was a sobering reminder of the fragility of life, but it was also interesting to see hundreds of people walking the same streets that thousands did years ago.  In spite of the thousands of years that separate us, being able to experience art and history in context was a reminder that we are still connected to those that lived before us.  This humanization is often lost within more carefully curated environments since we don't get to see the more mundane and messy aspects of everyday life, but Pompei allows us to see people from the past simply as that: people like us.

     With that said, I also enjoyed the variety of ways objects were displayed in Villa Giulia.  By changing the configuration of items within their display, the curators have kept things visually interesting to intrigue you to read more about them (that is, if you don't experience the language barrier of the majority of the descriptions being written in Italian), although some were crowded and overwhelming.  Still, I appreciated that by viewing collections of similar items together, I could see the connections between different groups of people and how they have influenced each other.  Unfortunately, since a lot of the displays featured a large number of artifacts within a small space, it was difficult to focus on the importance of any specific objects or to view them in detail.  While more curated environments certainly have their benefits, I did not find the same connection to the objects and their history at Villa Giulia as I did at Pompei.