This may be the final piece that I can uncover about the Royal Academy’s Byzantium exhibition. The (generally) excellent Newsnight team discuss Byzantium 330-1453 which explores the art and culture of the Byzantine empire.
This is an interesting (and lively!) discussion but the stars are the wonderful images of the ivories, mosaics and icons.
Press the image to play
Byzantine Blog 
Thanks for posting this. I never delete these posts without having a look, sooner or later….I was struck, as a North American, by the snide, rather rude, ripostes of the White Guy to the desire expressed by other panelists for more contextualization of the art objects. I did not see the exhibit but I can imagine the difficulty: a thousand years of a culture, society and state represented only by “unchanging” images. Gorgeous, but misleading. However, perhaps those who were frustrated by this lack of context will have been spurred on to do some reading: popular accounts of Byzantine history are now readily available. (I started with the trilogy by Julian Norwich, after all.)
Myrna, “rather rude, ripostes of the White Guy” – he is the writer and author Will Self, a controversial figure, but provocative which is what these sort of late night panels aim to be. Consensus would be anathema to the producers!!