Dimitris Daskalopoulos: “I consider myself a temporary watchman”

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Greek multimillionaire Dimitris Daskalopoulos announced in April 2022 that he was donating the majority of his private contemporary art collection to museums. At a ceremony in Athens attended by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Daskalopoulos announced the donation of more than 350 of the more than 500 items, among their authors the loudest names in contemporary art – Louise Bourgeois, Yannis Kounellis, Steve McQueen, Matthew Barney.

140 works will go to the National Museum of Modern Art in Athens, 110 to the Tate Gallery in London, and a hundred will be shared between the Guggenheim Foundation and the Chicago Museum of Modern Art. The latter will be able, thanks to the gift of Daskalopoulos, to close the gaps in his collection – he will receive the first works by Robert Gobert, Gada Amer, Karla Black, Sarah Lucas and Rebecca Warren, the online edition of ARTnews notes.

Daskalopoulos has long referred to his collection as a “storage” for museums and willingly sent exhibits for exhibitions around the world. “I go into a museum, I see people’s reactions, their emotions, and it makes me much more happy than looking at a picture on the wall in my living room every day,” he told the Independent Collectors online publication. But there is another reason as well. Many exhibits simply do not fit in his home. For example, Christoph Büchel’s 2007 Unplugged (Simply Botiful) installation, which occupies 450 sq. m.

Daskalopoulos places no conditions on museums receiving his donations, he told the Financial Times (FT): “They won’t have to constantly review the contract [со мной]to understand what they should do.” But he hopes that museums will be interested in his opinion. And the gifts to the Guggenheim Foundation and the Chicago Museum of Modern Art are jointly owned.

The museums are chosen so that the works he has collected are presented to the widest possible public around the world, explains Daskalopoulos. But why not open your own museum? “It never attracted me at all. For two reasons: firstly, establishing your own museum is like erecting a mausoleum, and I already have it at the First Cemetery [в Афинах], my mother built it for the family, and I don’t want another, ”he explained to FT. Secondly, Daskalopoulos believes that a private collection rests on the identity of the collector. If there is a desire that it does not disappear with the death of the owner, it is worth transferring it to the museum: “It will be there even in 100 years, when my name will be completely forgotten.”

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