‘”Before Plato started philosophising, the golden age of Greek art had already come to an end in every aspect. All the artistic ex-pressions which followed in Greece, Rome and classical Eu-rope were merely an echo of this primordial generation of the beauty of the Greek spirit of myth and, consequently, of re-ligion. All art of a high nature is religious, a tribute to the glory of the being” (Von Balthasar). The journey toward the mythical Greek world, toward the secret hidden in its architecture and art in general, which Meeting ’89 intends organising, follows a course based on the assumption that “the beauty of the world was for the ancients a manifestation of glory”, a manifesta-tion of the divine, a perception of the holy, as Eliade put it. Art and religiousness, art and a wi-despread sense of the sacred, beauty and myth all intertwine in Greek culture, until in the most outstanding works, they become one. The exhibition, rather than fol-low an historically organic itinerary – the theme of another exhibition on the same subject due to be staged next year – will attempt to teach the visitor to li-sten to the echo of this primor-dial generation of beauty that still vibrates in the images of Greek architecture and art. Two introductory panels, in an articulated synthesis composed of ancient representations of the cosmos and the gods, offer an interpretation of what must be considered the basic nucleus not only of Greek philosophy but more in general of human wisdom: the total awareness and acceptance of a “reason-” capable of tackling and coming to terms with reality, capable of giving it an order by retracing the echo of the cosmic order set down by the gods. Confidence in human reason and the humble hope of a link between it and that which tran-scends it, between it and the di-vine, are not widely acknowled-ged or widely accepted cultural outlooks nowadays but, in ancient times, they enabled ea-stern and western Greece to achieve the unequalled beauty of a truth accepted and beloved and consequently, somehow, not far away. The exhibition will present a wi-de range of pictures including examples of figurative art, architecture and town-planning archived by the Greek colonisers of southern Italy and Sicily between the 8th and 7th cent. B.C.. Particular attention will be focu-sed on four sites of the Greek West: Paestum, Agrigento, Selinunte and Segesta.’