Image: National Gallery of Athens
The two-day symposium ‘The World of the Avant-Garde: City, Nature, Universe, Human’ is scheduled for 26 and 27 September 2026. Taking place as the exhibition concludes, the event will offer another opportunity to reconsider the questions raised by the Avant-Garde through different scholarly approaches and forms of artistic expression.
The symposium is dedicated to the memory of Anna Kafetsi, who curated the National Gallery’s first major presentation in Greece of the Kostaki Collection in 1995. Its programme will discuss the history of the Kostaki Collection, its collector, the 1995 exhibition, the collection’s subsequent path in Thessaloniki and its international collaborations.
The exhibition was a collaboration between the National Gallery and MOMUS–Museum of Modern Art–Costakis Collection, presenting the Russian Avant-Garde through the relationship between humans and the world around them. Speakers include Syrago Tsiara, Maria Tsantsanoglou, Nicoletta Misler and John E. Bowlt.
The programme also includes a screening of the documentary ‘Όταν ο Σαγκάλ κόστιζε λιγότερο από ένα κιλό πατάτες’, attended by directors Giorgos Papakonstantinou and Giorgos Zervas and followed by a discussion with the audience. Guided tours will be led by Maria Tsantsanoglou and Syrago Tsiara, alongside an educational programme for children aged three to eight inspired by the Russian fairy tale ‘The Little Red Rose’.
As part of European Heritage Days 2026, admission to the symposium and related activities will be free, with attendance on a first-come, first-served basis.
