Exhibition commemorates Togo Salmon

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/togo_salmon.jpg” caption=”Dr. E. Togo Salmon at the Villa Madama, Rome 1972. Photo courtesy of Dr. A.G. McKay”]McMaster faculty member and distinguished scholar of classics and ancient history, E. Togo Salmon (1905 – 1988), is commemorated in an exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art, curated by Howard Jones from McMaster's Department of Classics.

The exhibition features a display of ancient coins, ceramics and glassware, and classically inspired paintings, etchings, drawings, prints, engravings and sculptures dating from between the 15th and 20th centuries. Also included are contemporary works by Spring Hurlbut, Audra Schoblocher, and Edward Tabachnik, three Canadianartists who make reference to antique themes and motifs. The more than 100 works on display illustrate the enduring presence of the classical world.

Edward Togo Salmon joined McMaster in 1930 when the University moved to Hamilton from its location on Bloor Street in Toronto. He had just completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge, and as the youngest member of the faculty at age 25, he was accorded the privilege of giving the first lecture on the new campus. With characteristic irony he chose to lecture on Cicero's essay Concerning Old Age.

His career at McMaster spanned 43 years. In addition to teaching generations of McMaster students, first in the Department of Classics and later as Messecar Professor of History, he was at the centre of the administrative life of the university, serving as department head of history, as principal of University College, and as vice-president, arts. Togo Salmon Hall was so named in his honour.

His main area of interest was the history of the Roman world and he contributed to its study with a number of acclaimed publications – A history of the Roman World from 30 BC to AD 138, Roman Colonization under the Republic, The Making of Roman Italy, and more than 100 journal articles. However, the work which gained him an international reputation and assured his place on the list of outstanding twentieth-century Roman historians was his pioneering study of the Samnites, an Italic people who eventually came under Roman domination. Samnium and the Samnites, published in 1967 by Cambridge University Press, was universally acclaimed as a masterful work of scholarship and was awarded the prestigious Goodwin Award of Merit by the American Philological Association.

His scholarly work brought Togo Salmon many honours – election as Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, receipt of the Royal Society Chauveau Medal, election as Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy – in addition to honourary degrees from five Canadian universities and the University of Sydney, Australia.

While Togo Salmon's principal interest was in the ancient world itself, he was also acutely conscious of its rich intellectual and cultural legacy. Thus it seems fitting that we celebrate his centenary by bringing the Classical and post-Classical worlds together.

Related programs include:

• Play – The Trojan Women

  A McMaster Summer Drama Festival presentation

  Sunday, Sept. 25 at 2 p.m.

• Public lecture by professor Robin Osborne, King's College, Cambridge, UK, Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor to Humanities 2005

  “The Politics of Visual Images”

  McMaster University, Gilmour Hall, Council Chambers, Room 111

  Thursday, Sept. 29 at 5:30 p.m.

• Public reception

  Thursday, Sept. 29 from 7-9 p.m.

• Lunchtime talk by Serena Witzke, graduate student, Department of Classics

  Thursday, Oct. 6 at 12:30 p.m.

• Film Federico Fellini's Satyricon

  Sunday October 9 at 2 p.m.