What happened when Greek tycoon Dimitris Daskalopoulos gave away his art collection?

When, in 2022, the Greek businessman and famed contemporary art collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos decided to gift his collection to four public museums in three different countries, it caused something more than the usual stir in those circles. Most obviously there was the size and quality of the collection: more than 350 works, by 142 artists, including some genuine stars: Matthew Barney, Steve McQueen, Louise Bourgeois.

But then there was something else: the unusually selfless and undemanding nature of his donation, his emphasis that the works should now be collected and curated by institutions which, he said, were in a better position than him to judge their worth, disseminate them to a wide public, and do what they wanted with them.

Many donors — no names, not least because they can be seen emblazoned on museum walls all over the world — set conditions for the prominent display of their gifts. Daskalopoulos takes the opposite view: he wants to set his pieces free, and enjoy watching them find new meanings and audiences among their new homes.

So, I ask him two years later, will there be no “Highlights of the Daskalopoulos Collection” exhibitions appearing on art world calendars in the near future? “No,” he says firmly, while admitting he had “quite a discussion with myself” about their future. “I was inevitably led to the conclusion that [the works] should be made available to the public in the best possible way, creating new dialogues with existing collections.

“For every art work, there are millions of interpretations. Each person who sees it has an interpretation, and mine is no more important than anyone else’s. And then the public doesn’t care who bought the work, where it came from, who gifted it.”

To say, ‘This is a gift, I don’t want anything in return’, is quite rare. This is what I consider to be enlightened, progressive patronage

The works have now all been distributed to their new destinations: Tate, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST), the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. “I am so happy to see how it has rolled out,” he says with enthusiasm. “I can see how it has sparked the creativity of people working in the museums, they want to play with these works, and are thinking about what they want to put next to them.”

As he has been touring the four venues, I ask, has he also enjoyed seeing some of the pieces in a new light? “Not only in a new light,” he says candidly, “but in some cases, for the first time! There have been quite a few bought over the last decade that I did not necessarily make any physical contact with.” He approaches these, he says, “as a spectator, rather than as a knowledgable art person”.

We are sitting in the bright, airy surrounds of the ground floor café at EMST in Athens, which has been the first of the four museums to begin the process of assimilating some of its 140 Daskalopoulos gifts into its core collection. They appear in WOMEN, together, part of the museum’s cycle of exhibitions on the provocative theme of What If Women Ruled the World?

In this case, the donation is well-timed, coinciding with a notable revival in the institution’s fortunes after a troublesome recent history. The museum, sited in one-half of the former Fix brewery, a much-admired Modernist landmark in the Greek capital (the other half was controversially demolished in 1995), has led a nomadic life for most of this century while a refurbishment was completed. 

The arrival of a new artistic director, Katerina Gregos, in 2021 and a series of acclaimed shows has begun to put EMST on the international map, and Gregos is quick to express her appreciation of Daskalopoulos’s “exemplary” spirit of generosity. “To say, ‘This is a gift, I don’t want anything in return, I only want you to make creative use of it’ — that is quite rare,” she says. “This is what I consider to be enlightened, progressive patronage.”  

Philanthropists such as these are particularly welcome to an institution that relies entirely on public money. The model of mixed funding is making slow headway in Greece, but Gregos says it was important to clarify EMST’s mission before addressing that issue.

“When I came here, people asked, ‘Why aren’t you spending your time running after money?’ and I said, ‘I want to prove what we can do. I want to build an identity, build a programme, become a hub, increase our audience and become relevant. After all that, then we can go after private money.’”

Twenty-four of the Daskalopoulos works are included in a new part of the What If Women Ruled the World? cycle, which has prompted a re-hang of the EMST collection, a telling indicator of the gift’s importance. The title is based on a 2016 neon work by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana, currently adorning the museum’s north and south facades.   

Gregos says the title is “a little bit tongue-in-cheek”, and has a reflective rather than prescriptive intention. “It is a hypothetical. We are not saying [women] would do better. But there is a chance that they might do better, because they have different sensibilities. They might be more compromising, more compassionate, more caring.” 

Another programming priority for Gregos is to concentrate on the geopolitical concerns of the area surrounding Greece, rather than aim for a blandly international approach. “If you stick a compass in Greece and draw a circle around it, for me that is one of the most interesting — politically, historically, culturally, religiously — parts of the world. Because we are in the Balkans, close to Turkey, neighbours to the Middle East, across from north Africa, and in the Mediterranean.

“This region may seem small, but there is wonderful artistic production happening here. If you come to Athens you will see work by artists, many of whom you will not have come across before, and many of whom will be telling stories you don’t know.” She cites as an example the uprooting of populations in the wake of the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-22, known to Greeks as the “Asia Minor catastrophe”. “Many of my north European friends have never even heard of it. But it was pivotal — the first huge forced migration crisis of the 20th century.”

If Athens’s revivified contemporary art space is the most obviously affected by the Daskalopoulos donation, some of his works are beginning to figure, in similarly organic fashion, in the plans of the other three institutions. Nine pieces have inspired the Guggenheim’s current By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection show, and five appear in the MCA’s Descending the Staircase exhibition. 

At London’s Tate Modern, Pipilotti Rist’s video installation Lungenflügel (2009), one of 110 donated works, is currently on display, while a series of unveilings of works is planned over the summer months partly to celebrate the award of an OBE last October to Daskalopoulos for services to the arts and philanthropy.

Gregor Muir, director of Tate’s international art collection, underlines the “excitement” that the collection has prompted among the receiving museums. “I think it has also been an eye-opener for him,” he says, “getting to see how everything swings into action, seeing pieces he may not have seen for some time being really enjoyed by a wider public. It’s like you get to be a guest at your own party.”

To October 31, emst.gr 

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