The Doorkeeper of the Year

 January begins our year, but do you know where it came from?

January was added around 700 BCE (along with February) to bring the Roman calendar to 355 days, closer to a full a solar year of 365 days. Originally, the month was near the end of the year, but Julius Caesar reordered the calendar in 45 BCE, adding 10 days for a true solar year and January was placed at the beginning of the year.

 January (Ianuarius in Latin) is named for Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings.

 Head of Janus, Vatican museum, Rome from Wikipedia Commons 

Janus had two faces, which looked both backward and forward. With such an ambiguous description, Janus oversaw birth and death, war and peace, as well as the past and the future. He was invoked at the beginning of any number of things, including marriage, harvest, and journeys.

Temple of Janus on Coin from the time of Nero, from Wikipedia Commons

A temple to Janus in Rome would keep its doors open during war time, so that the god could intervene if necessary, and would close them during peace time. However, the doors were rarely closed and the ceremony to close them was an important event.

Janus is generally associated with doorkeepers and we derive our word "janitor" from his name.

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." --Aldous Huxley

Share Spotlight: Surprised in Rome: Bravo Palazzo Massimo!

I've really gotten interested in blogs recently and currently follow 17 blogs of various types, from fashion and lifestyle to Catholic to comics to museums to Spanish language. I've got some wide interests. :) But I thought that it would be neat if I picked a post each week to highlight. I'll start with a link to the blog post, then tell you what I think of it.


 This week's share spotlight comes from The Uncataloged Museum.

Surprised in Rome: Bravo Palazzo Massimo!

I love museums (obviously, I'm in a Museum Studies Program) and I love to travel, but the two don't always come together as often as I'd like. This post was a vicarious way for me to travel to Italy, but was also a bit more than that.

As a budding museum professional, how a museum is presented to the public is incredibly important. As museums have shifted to an educational focus, the public becomes the primary audience, and if they aren't getting anything out of the museum, the museum isn't doing its job.

Imagine my surprise to read that Italy, the Mecca for art museum lovers, was so poorly interpreted! But Linda Norris, the author of The Uncataloged Museum blog, has found a gem. Palazzo Massimo sounds like a wonderful visit, whether you are a museum professional or not.

What do you think? If you've been abroad, how do foreign museums differ from American museums in interpretation? What about museums in the US? What museum have you been to that struck you as a gem?