Michael Herzfeld, who held a professorial chair in the social sciences at Harvard University and is an honorary Greek citizen, reflects on Greece as a lifelong intellectual and emotional focus shaped by his own cosmopolitan background. He introduces the concept of “crypto-colonialism” to describe countries like Greece and Thailand that were never formally colonized yet internalized Western pressures and ideals, especially through an internal class hierarchy, nationalism, and a rigid model of the nation-state. 

For Herzfeld, identities are inherently fluid, and attempts to harden them have produced many modern tragedies. His chosen object, a Byzantine ceramic bowl depicting the frontier hero Digenis, symbolizes mixed origins and cultural flexibility. Likewise, Cretan Renaissance icons and artists such as Michael Damaskinos and El Greco reveal long histories of mutual influence between Byzantine and Western art. 

Herzfeld argues that museums like the Benaki offer a space to pause, notice these entanglements, and rethink what it means to be human. Above all, he insists, culture thrives on curiosity—once we stop being curious, we stop truly existing.