State of Concept
Athens

Shortly before the end of the first episode of Waste/d Pavilion, State of Concept Athens and Temporary Academy of Arts invite you to a research presentation and open discussion entitled ‘Claiming a Museum of Contemporary Art” with Tina Pandi, Marina Markellou and their guests Marianna Strapatsaki and Esther Solomon.

In Greece, the first steps for the establishment and operation of a state museum of contemporary art are traced back to the mid-1970s, within a dynamic field of artistic and cultural fermentation and institutional process. What kind of museum of contemporary art was desired by artists and other professionals? What artistic initiatives and narratives emerged? What kind of institutional discourses were developed? The presentation focuses on examples of attempts for the establishment of a state museum of contemporary art in the country in 1976, to the establishment of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in 1997.

The aim is to highlight different episodes: the artistic and institutional initiatives that took place around the establishment, the operation and role of a museum of contemporary art, as well as to explore the relations with broader issues of institution building in the Greek field. From the artistic claim for a “museum-living organism” in the first years of the post-dictatorship period, to the museum-network of the architect Mit Mitropoulos, the presentation will attempt a critical framework of forgotten and less prominent views of the museum of contemporary art.