vernissage
Sep. 10th, 2008 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordvernissage - n., a private showing or reception of an art exhibition.
Originally, the day before an exhibition's opening was reserved for the artist to varnish the paintings, to give them a finishing touch. It became the custom to allow the gallery's best patrons a chance to see the works before the masses, and from that the modern reception came. From French, lit. a varnishing, from vernis, varnish, from Medieval Latin vernicium, from Medieval Greek berniké, from Greek Berenikē, a city in Cyrenaica (now Bengasi, Lybia) that supposedly first used the stuff, named after the Ptolemaic queen of Egypt Berenikē II, who came from the area, whose name is the Macedonian dialect version of Pherenikē, meaning "bearer of victory."
---L.
Originally, the day before an exhibition's opening was reserved for the artist to varnish the paintings, to give them a finishing touch. It became the custom to allow the gallery's best patrons a chance to see the works before the masses, and from that the modern reception came. From French, lit. a varnishing, from vernis, varnish, from Medieval Latin vernicium, from Medieval Greek berniké, from Greek Berenikē, a city in Cyrenaica (now Bengasi, Lybia) that supposedly first used the stuff, named after the Ptolemaic queen of Egypt Berenikē II, who came from the area, whose name is the Macedonian dialect version of Pherenikē, meaning "bearer of victory."
---L.
