Start signal for the National Gallery

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The 2023-2024 program proposes group, thematic exhibitions, introduces a public program of speech and art actions that will each time frame them, supports the “slightly forgotten” branches of the National Gallery, intensifies synergies with public and private bodies, enriches educational programs in different categories of audience and introduces museum treatment even to infants (from 18 months to 5 years).

New life is being given to the National Gallery by the two-year program announced on Monday by Syrago Tsiara, laying the foundations of her own vision, as an art historian with rich curatorial practice, and for four months now director of the National Gallery. Plan and vision, as she said at her first press conference presenting the 2023-2024 program, “that the collections and the history of the National Gallery talk to the current needs of society and contemporary currents, in a more fruitful, more thoughtful way in the search for the portrayal of national identity”. In a few words, he gave “a starting signal for a National Gallery of all of us” with a cultural and social imprint on the popular, since the time of Marina Lampaki-Plaka, National Gallery.

The National Gallery, said Syrago Tsiara, “is at an important moment in its journey, it has already achieved key goals. Although understaffed, it has excellent staff, partners and management. He has loyal friends and supporters.”

The 2023-2024 program proposes group, thematic exhibitions, introduces a public program of speech and art actions that will each time frame them, supports the “slightly forgotten” branches of the National Gallery, intensifies synergies with public and private bodies, enriches educational programs in different categories of audience and introduces museum treatment even to infants (from 18 months to 5 years). Also, until the end of 2023, the permanent collection will be presented on the third floor, redesigned for a variety of interpretive approaches and rotated every two years.

As for the restaurant of the Art Gallery, it operates as a pilot for a month and immediately after that it will be delivered to the public.

In the meantime, the reopening of the Sculpture Gallery in ‘Alsos Stratou in Goudi from 2/11, after two years of shutdown due to maintenance work, is accompanied by the opening of the Western European Art Hall in the new building (level -2) of the Gallery. The hall opens with 47 paintings from the 1,250 paintings of foreign schools, donated to the National Gallery. The oldest work, the “Holy Trinity” dates from 1389 and is attributed to Marco Veneziano, and the newest is the “Lunar Landscape” (d. 1966) by Lucio Fontana.

Picasso and the donation of French artists to Greece

Among the 47 works of the exhibition of Western European Art, five of the paintings donated in 1946 by French artists to the Greek people are presented. And in principle, the long-suffering “Head of a Woman” by Picasso is being exhibited for the first time after the theft, with the great painter’s dedication on the back of the painting “for the courage of the Greek people and their fight against fascism”. It is the famous work that was stolen in 2012 and was located by the Authorities in 2021, as well as the painting “Mill” (1905) by the Dutchman Piet Mondrian. From the donation of the French artists, the work of Francis Picabia “Head”, “Beach” by Albert Marche, “Mother and child with a red apron” by Andre Fuzeron, “Nude” by Andre Lot is also presented.

Periodic reports

The exhibition “Constantinos Parthenis – The ideal Greece of his painting” is extended until the beginning of March 2023. It will be accompanied by a scientific meeting on the effect of Theosophism on the Visual Arts, as well as a performance based on a historical text from 1930 by Nikos Yokarinis, on the quarrels surrounding the artistic attitude of Konstantinos Parthenis. On the other hand, in the spring of 2023, the exhibition of Greek artists on the theme of “Urban Experience” in the decades 1950s – 1960s – 1970s in the visual arts and cinema will be presented, in collaboration with the Film Library of Greece.

Report on the Republic of Southern Europe

In 2024, a major international exhibition on “Democracy” is expected to be inaugurated, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the restoration of democracy in Greece, in 1974. A year that historically coincides with the Carnation Revolution and the restoration of democracy in Portugal as and with the Spanish transition to democracy, with the death of the dictator Franco in 1975. “At a time of threatening resurgence of authoritarian forces in Europe and erosion of democratic achievements, an exhibition of how artists were inspired by struggles against authoritarian regimes, it acquires additional importance” emphasized the director of the National Gallery of Syrago Tsiara.

Regarding the finances of the National Gallery, the Minister of Culture stated at the press conference that “the co-financed programs available to us come from the national resources of the Ministry of Culture, the new NSRF 2021-2027, which will start in the coming months and the Gallery, in any case, has the right but also the possibility to claim them”. Lina Mendoni expressed thanks to Syrago Tsiara “for what she has done in these three and a half months, with a difficult adjustment, and in fact inheriting a strong personality” Besides, as the minister said, “from Marina Lampaki-Plaka, the three decades director of the National Gallery started this whole project of the Gallery and relied on her to a very large extent as she handed over the renewed Gallery to the next generation.”

For his part, the Deputy Minister of Culture, responsible for Contemporary Culture, Nikolas Giatromanolakis, underlined the common goal of YPPOA – EPMAS, which is none other than to join together the thread of the continuity of the institution’s history, moving towards a holistic and integrated approach. This, he explained, means care and interventions for the “slightly forgotten”, as he said, branches of EPMAS and the Sculpture Gallery in Goudi, the educational programs, the operating regulations of the Gallery which is the “custodian of the visual history of the country”.

RES-EMP

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