‘Views for perverts!’: The threat of upskirting in the New Acropolis Museum, Athens

The New Acropolis Museum is the most visited of Greece's numerous museums. Concerns have, however, been regularly expressed by visitors regarding the threat of voyeurism, notably upskirting, within the glass-floored sections of the Museum. This form of gendered violence was recognized as a hazard for female visitors touring many of the galleries soon after the inauguration of the building in 2009. In the years that have followed, the presence of the glass flooring has elicited numerous negative comments, spanning a range of different media, in which serious misgivings have been expressed regarding the environment of voyeuristic potential that exists within the New Acropolis Museum. This paper offers a case study into the long-apparent threat to the personal privacy of anyone wearing skirts and dresses while touring Greece's premier museum, and the problematic design decisions made by the building's architects that created an environment in which visitors have become subjects of the voyeuristic gaze almost as much as the exhibits on display within the galleries of the New Acropolis Museum.