This October, the National Gallery is preparing for a new series of exhibitions set to open over the coming months. The Avant-Garde World. City, Nature, Universe, Human ended with a two-day symposium on 26 and 27 September, drawing 5,000 visitors. Researchers, artists and members of the public came together for a lively exchange on the avant-garde, its history and contemporary artistic practice.
The National Gallery’s activities continue in October with educational programmes, guided tours and events that invite visitors to engage more closely with art and the collection. Highlights include an event marking the European Days of Conservation-Restoration, an innovative collaboration with the Ethnological Museum of Thrace, and an initiative developed with the National Rehabilitation Center of Greece that explores participatory design.
Exhibitions, educational activities, collaborations and new ways of engaging with the public are all part of the same commitment: to keep the National Gallery a vibrant and accessible space for art, knowledge and dialogue. That commitment also looks ahead, to how the collection is shaped and enriched for the future. Donations play an important role in this process. Each one adds something distinctive to the collection while making a work of art accessible to a much wider audience. A work once held in a private collection can become part of our shared cultural heritage, available to be exhibited and studied, to inspire new questions, and to be discovered by generations to come.
The National Gallery’s collection thereby remains dynamic and open to the future. It continues to grow and evolve, revealing itself anew through the works it acquires, the stories it tells and the connections it builds with its audiences.
Enriching the Collection: Donations and Loans
Donation by the Anthony E. Comninos Foundation
The donation by the Anthony E. Comninos Foundation’s Collection of Philhellenic Works of Art represents a particularly significant addition to the National Gallery and lays the groundwork for a new museum dedicated to the Greek War of Independence. Comprising 79 works, the collection will join historical paintings from the National Gallery’s own holdings to form the core of the new museum, which will be housed in the Old Military Bakery complex in Goudi, near the National Glyptotheque.
The new museum will explore artistic representations of the Greek War of Independence and the Philhellenic movement, placing them within the wider context of nineteenth-century European art and the revolutionary fervour of the period. The National Gallery is fully committed to helping shape a contemporary, accessible and educational museum narrative with national and international reach.
Loan – Eleftherios Venizelos History Foundation
The loan of 17 paintings from the Eleftherios Venizelos History Foundation is an important addition to the National Gallery, enriching its presentation of Greek painting in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Almost all of the works were previously shown in an exhibition organised by the National Gallery at the Byzantine and Christian Museum in 2017. Their presence at the National Gallery will help fill gaps and offer a fuller understanding of the development of Greek painting during this period.
Donation of Works from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection
The National Gallery welcomes the donation of 29 works of modern art by leading Greek artists from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection. These works marked the beginning of Dimitris Daskalopoulos’s activity as a collector and laid the foundations for what would become one of the most significant private collections of contemporary art anywhere in the world.
This important addition enriches the National Gallery’s holdings with works by Greek artists dating from 1960 to 1990, a particularly fertile period for Greek art, marked by profound change, artistic ferment and interchange with European currents.
As the works move from the private domain into the public, institutional setting of the National Gallery, they enter into a new dialogue with the Gallery’s existing holdings, opening up new opportunities for exhibition and research. The first work from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection gift to the National Gallery has already been presented in the exhibition Alekos Fassianos. Under the Summer Sun at the Corfu Annex. Further works from the gift are expected to feature in the redesigned display of the collection currently being planned for the third-floor galleries of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Wing in the Central Building.
Long-Term Loan – Society for the Promotion of Education and Learning
The National Gallery will welcome two emblematic works by Nikephoros Lytras, the monumental full-length portraits of King Otto and Queen Amalia, on a twenty-year loan from the Society for the Promotion of Education and Learning. Painted in 1892 and 1893, the portraits have been closely associated with the organisation since their creation: the Society commissioned them from Lytras in 1891.
For more than a century, the works graced the Society’s historic hall, becoming an integral part of an institution with a longstanding presence in Greece’s educational and cultural life. The loan comes as the National Gallery prepares a major exhibition devoted to Lytras, bringing together two institutions with deep historical roots. It also provides an opportunity to present two works of considerable historical and artistic value to a wider audience and to place them within the broader story of modern Greek painting.
