Upcoming art exhibitions for the season
A number of art exhibitions scheduled for the fall season are already preparing the mood for the cultural events to take place before and during the Olympic Games. Toward the end of October, «Outlook» – probably the biggest exhibition of contemporary art ever held in Athens – will open in the exhibition space at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the Technopolis complex in Gazi and the new premises of the Benaki Museum. Curated by Christos Ioakeimidis, the exhibition will show the work of roughly 85 contemporary artists – Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Naumann, Jannis Kounellis, Joseph Beuys, Franz Ackermann, Monica Bonvicini, Thomas Grunfeld are among them. Also at the end of next month, the Benaki Museum has scheduled a retrospective of the late Giorgos Mavroidis, one of the painters of the so-called ’30s generation. Before that, the museum will host Sylvia Ioannou’s private collection of maps of Cyprus dating from the 15th – 19th centuries. Coming up at the National Gallery is an exhibition on German 19th century Romantic painting from the permanent collection of the Art Museum of Hamburg. «The Italian Renaissance and Ancient Greece» is scheduled for later in the year. The National Gallery has more ambitious plans for the spring. The Byzantine and Christian Museum has scheduled an unusual exhibition which will put on view the paintings and drawings of late celebrated poet Yiannis Ritsos. The State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki has also announced its program. Besides the ongoing exhibition of the Costakis collection, one of its highlights is the retrospective on Yiannis Xenakis.
