A new museum opens its gates to the public in Athens on October 2, 2019: The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation
The museum’s mission, as envisioned by its founders, is for everyone to have access to unique works of art created by some of the world’s most important modern artists, including many Greek masters.
The new museum has been designed with the purpose of housing the founders’ private art collection, featuring rare works by artists such as Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Degas, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Picasso, Braque, Léger, Miró, Giacometti, Balthus, and others, as well as works by Greek modernists including Parthenis, Bouzianis, Vassiliou, Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Tsarouchis, Moralis and Tetsis.
Among the exhibits is an extremely valuable 16th painting by El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos).
Speaking at the press conference, before the museum’s grand opening, Kyriakos Koutsomallis, Director of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, stated that the team behind the museum have aspired to create a place “open to everyone”, a place where ideas, views and opinions interact with each other, as per the original founders’ wishes.
Background
Shipowner Basil Goulandris and his wife Elise established the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in 1979. Sharing a passionate love for the arts, especially painting, their aim was to create a series of cultural institutions; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Andros, Goulandris’ birthplace, was established in 1979. It was the first Contemporary Art Museum in Greece and its core were the works of Andriot sculptor Michalis Tombros, while items from the Goulandris private collection were soon added.
In 1992 the couple announced their intention to open up the rest of their private collection to the public in a museum in the centre of Athens, but their plans were met with a series of setbacks, starting with the difficulty of finding a suitable space in a convenient location.
The deaths of Basil in 1994 and Elise in 2000 added further complications due to legal disputes over their inheritance, since they left no children.
In 2012 works were finally able to start on a listed three-story residence of the interwar period in Pagrati. The construction was completed in October 2018.
Museum website in English here.
