UMass Department of Classics Welcomes the Marios Philippides Collection Featuring Ancient Greek Artifacts

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UMass Amherst Classics Department undergraduates are going beyond just learning about the past: they’re creating a record of it.  

In January 2024, the UMass Amherst Department of Classics was the recipient of a bequest of ancient Greek artifacts for use as a study collection. The objects were part of the collection of long-time UMass Amherst Classics Professor Marios Philippides. With Philippides’s tragic and untimely passing in 2023, his widow, Corinne, sought to honor his legacy and commitment to undergraduate education by giving the collection to the school. 

Roxanne Edel, a classical studies major, and Claire Mundell, Jordan Hill, and Cecilia Demolli, all classical studies minors, will work throughout the academic year with Assistant Professor Shannon Hogue of the Department of Classics and other members of its faculty to catalog the Marios Philippides Collection and curate thematic displays of the materials. The work is funded by the Kress Foundation through its History of Art Grants program. 

“This is such an amazing opportunity,” says Hill. “The opportunity to touch, to hold materials is a new and unique way to build a relationship not just to objects but to the people who created them.” 

For the Department of Classics, the curation of the collection is the culmination of Philippides’s lifelong commitment to placing objects of antiquity in the hands of students. For decades, Philippides, a College Outstanding Teaching Award and Distinguished Teaching Award winner, regularly brought artifacts into his Greek Mythology and Greek Civilization classes, inspiring students by physically connecting them to a genuine, physical sense of antiquity.  

Hogue has already used objects from the collection in her teaching.  

“It just adds a new dimension to any discussion of archaeology,” Hogue says. “It’s one thing to show a photograph of an object, but something else entirely to place a pot in someone hands and let them feel the shape and weight of it, just as someone did thousands of years before.” 

Claire Mundell and Cecilia Demolli, both veterans of UMass Amherst archaeological field work projects, say they were thrilled by the opportunity to see through the collection lived experiences that often escape notice.  

“We’re telling stories through the objects,” Mundell says, “and these are the stories of people who usually don’t have much of an historical voice.” 

For Edel, the objects provide pathways to understanding ancient processes. “When you look carefully and really examine these pieces, it lets you see not just what the object is, but how it was made.” 

While the Kress Foundation grant will see the creation of a catalog and curated show of the materials, the artifacts will continue to serve the role Marios Philippides envisioned for them. Courses in Greek Mythology, Greek Archaeology, and Archaeological Data Science will all use the collection for years to come, connecting future generations of students to a deeper appreciation of a shared past.