With the presence of the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the archival exhibition dedicated to the ten years of operation and contribution of the Institute of Contemporary Greek Art (ISET 2010-2020) was inaugurated earlier today. An exhibition that marks the beginning of a new life cycle for ISET after the announcement of the donation to the National Gallery, not only of its rich digitized archive and equipment, but also of the property that houses it.
From the beginning, the Institute of Contemporary Greek Art aimed at recording as completely as possible the course of the visual arts in Greece from 1945 until today. For its smooth operation, he decided on the donation, which comes to complete the archival material of the National Gallery.
For the director of the National Gallery Marina Lambraki-Plaka, Valaoritou 9, where ISET is based, will be “an organic new hangout of the National Gallery in the city center».
With exhibitions, a library, walking in the tradition of the Institute as a space open to scholars of contemporary Greek art, postgraduate students, artists and the art-loving public. He described as “brave and appropriate” the decision of the president of the Institute of Contemporary Art Julia Dimakopoulou and the founding members to donate the Institute with its facilities to the National Gallery-Museum of Alexandros Soutsos.
“ISET was asking for an institution that would adopt their precious child for its smooth operation and when the proposal was made to the National Gallery, I started cultivating the land because the bureaucratic difficulties were insurmountable,” said Marina Lambraki-Plaka, outlining the chronicle. of the transfer. “ISET is supported by a specialized scientific and technical staff which constantly feeds and enriches the multidimensional archive stock. The stay of the employees was a condition of the donation “she stressed, among other things, expressing gratitude to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, as she said,” not only endowed ISET with its modern equipment, but also ensured its smooth operation for a long time covering the salaries of its employees “. He also thanked the Euripides Koutlidis Foundation, which in the framework of its institutional cooperation with the National Gallery “willingly accepted to hire the five-member staff of ISET in order to ensure the continuity of its operation.”
For the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, “the support of art and culture organizations has been stable since its foundation and in this spirit it has supported the operation and development of ISET three times since 2011, recognizing its serious work and contribution. We are very happy for the fact of the implementation of the generous donation of the Institute to one of the largest organizations in our country, the National Gallery “said Spyros Alexopoulos, on behalf of the Board of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, talking about the” generosity of Juloua Julia and the determination of Marina Lambraki-Plaka “.
For the Deputy Minister of Culture Nikolas Giatromanolakis, the donation of ISET is “a sign of trust in the state art bodies, as it happened with the recent donation of the collection of Dimitris Daskalopoulos to EMST. In other words, we see that for their survival, cultural institutions join forces with state institutions “.
Ms. Sakellaropoulou described the donation as a historic moment for Greek art in her greeting, praising ISET’s action as “a valuable ark for documenting the history and evolution of the post-war art movement in our country” and the donation of the inspirer and director Dimakopoulou, “soul” of the historical gallery New Forms.
As the President of the Republic pointed out, “for all of us who grew up in the era of dictatorship, when the few art galleries gathered artists and the public at events that replaced the forbidden political action, the” New Forms “was one of the points reference. They helped us to welcome the new, to meet the surprise, to be initiated in new aesthetic approaches and pioneering reflections, without ever losing a horizon of historicity of Greek art. And above all to realize that the creative work is not just an emotional, emotional expression, but a formation of spiritual forces “.
Julia Dimakopoulou “transformed her gallery, from a simple exhibition space, into a place of formation of recipients of the artistic phenomenon with a critical attitude towards its continuous transformations, into a place of dialogue,” said the President of the Republic. Initiator of the Panhellenic Association of Art Galleries and the Art Athina exhibition, creator of the Institute of Contemporary Greek Art and now bequeathed to the National Gallery of the fruit of more than fifty years of work, she contributed significantly to the promotion of Greek art, emphasized research and study. not only to preserve the past but to connect organically with the present and the future “continued the President of the Republic, also praising” the tireless efforts of the director of the National Gallery Marina Lambraki-Plaka in order to obtain not only the archive of the Institute, but and the property that houses it, its work and exhibition space “concluded the President of the Republic.
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