The first chapter of the exhibition, The Museum of Possibilities, reflects on the museum’s beginnings in 2000—a moment marked equally by promise and challenge. The institution and its collection had to be built from scratch, with modest resources and little existing infrastructure. This opening ensemble presents a focused, tight selection of seminal Greek artists from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, supplemented by recent donations that enrich and expand the museum’s existing holdings. It includes key figures such as Jannis Kounellis and Costas Tsoclis, whose works were featured in Transcultures (2004), curated by the Museum’s founding director Anna Kafetsi, in the museum’s first major collection-building exhibition at Megaron Concert Hall, a decade before its move into permanent premises.
This section juxtaposes seminal artists of the same generation, both men and women. The contrasts in artistic language, scale, materiality, and conceptual orientation are striking. Monumental practices characterised by pronounced materiality coexist with more intimate, small-scale works created with humble, modest means, revealing distinct artistic approaches. Together, these works are revisited as foundational not only to the formation of the collection but also to the museum’s evolving vision and future direction. This chapter thus reflects the museum’s effort to build a collection from scratch— one that is both rooted in and responsive to its cultural context.
At the same time, it aims to acknowledge the museum not as a neutral container of culture, but as a site where historical narratives are continuously re-negotiated and where artists’ positions within art history are constantly re-examined and reframed. This concern is articulated through renewed visibility for women artists whose practices, despite their significance, were often overshadowed by those of their male contemporaries. By placing works by artists such as Chryssa, Bia Davou, Leda Papaconstantinou, and Rena Papaspyrou in dialogue with canonical male figures of the period, the chapter highlights alternative genealogies of artistic innovation.
