Dimitris Daskalopoulos has accrued many high-profile artworks over the last three decades, spanning from the time of running his family’s food empire to now, the point he has decided to donate a large amount of his art collection.
There are few people in the contemporary art world who have the collection that Daskopoulos has, Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramovic, Helen Chadwick, Sarah Lucas and Matthew Barney, just to name a few.
Of the 350 works by 142 artists that the collector is donating, 110 of them will go to London’s Tate; 100 will be divided between the Guggenheim in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, with the rest being kept by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens.
The gift also comes with the creation of a network of curators that he hopes will lead to a flourishing of exchange, especially between the Tate and EMST, at a time when contemporary art in Greece is showing dynamism and promise.
“I never felt like an owner of the works,” Daskopoulos says to The Guardian in an interview.
“I always felt like a caretaker, a custodian of the creativity of other people.”
At 65 years old, Daskalopoulos has spent close to half his life culminating his collection. The decision to donate might be the natural end of a passion that was, according to him, never pursued for financial gain, but his interest in contemporary art.
Until his early 30s, traditional abstract Greek painting of the 50s and 60s that adorned his home in Athens.
Source: The Guardian
