Introducing modern art to a culture brought up on classicism, marble columns and the galloping friezes of the Parthenon would appear to be a daunting and thankless task, but Katerina Koskinas, the director of Greece’s first National Museum of Contemporary Art, was giddy with excitement and lack of sleep on the eve of the museum’s opening…
“We are very used to feeling proud about our past. Now I think the moment has come to bridge the past with the present,” said Mrs Koskina, adding:”Even in the most difficult periods of our history and even now, it’s through civilisation and culture that one can feel free.”
EMST was conceived in a period of optimism. In the late 1990s, Greece planned its new Acropolis Museum, now the country’s most popular attraction after the Acropolis itself. Athens has since acquired two concert halls, and early next year will have a monumental national library and opera – a $600m cultural complex donated by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
The shift to culture could emerge as Greece’s next national project…
Source: Al Jazeera