‘I feel at home here’: Michael Rakowitz’s Acropolis Museum exhibition locates the lines between stories of lost heritage

At the opening of Allspice: Michael Rakowitz and Ancient Cultures in Athens, the Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz stood on a podium, backlit by an illuminated Acropolis.
Half of the ancient Greek complex’s treasures are exhibited at the Acropolis Museum, where the exhibition is taking place, but many are missing—some controversially housed instead at the British Museum and other international institutions. Their absence evokes the damaged and looted Iraqi heritage Rakowitz so lovingly honours in his own work.
Speaking to the assembled crowd of art collectors, artists and other notables, Rakowitz said: “I feel at home here.”
Allspice is the first in a trilogy of exhibitions organised by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Acropolis Museum, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens and the Athens based non-profit organisation Neon that is unfolding between 2025 and 2026. It also marks the first time that the Acropolis Museum has presented work by a living artist.