ABSTRACT
A main question to be asked right from the beginning is: how does one exhibit authority? Or can authority be exhibited at all? It is true that an exhibition includes within it various notions of authority and plays with that idea as such. It uses, for example, the word authority to promote its qualities and it is common for the curators of an exhibition to be described as the authorities in their eld, no matter whether they are or not. An exhibition also includes the authority of its objects, some of which appear to have a higher authority than others. e catalogue of an exhibition also plays with the idea of authority in an eort to remain an everlasting authority in the eld with all its contributors being described as authorities in their own elds. It is as if authority appears to be a notion per se in every exhibition. Moreover, an exhibition on Byzantium shows the art of a society in which authority was an essential component. For example, one could list many types of authority analysed in this volume: the authority of the empire; the authority of the state; the authority of the Church; the authority of the emperor; the authority of the patriarch; the authority of Christ; the authority of the Virgin; the authority of saints and above all the supreme authority of God.
