A unique MOCA to remind Alexis Tsipras that not all the oligarchs are the same

We don’t know whether Basil and Elise Goulandris would have been happy or not about the resounding Syryza’s victory in Greece, as it’s not easy to predict their reaction to the wave of protest against oligarchs that Alexis Tsipras’s party is representing. But remembering the support they gave to art and culture during all their life appears to be the best way to wish Greece good luck for the big issues it is going to face in the upcoming months.

 

If people from Andros can count not only on the natural beauty of their windy island that the novelist Ioanna Karistian has called Micra Anglia (Jasmine tale, 2006), but also on the cultural allure provided by a Museum of Contemporary Art exhibiting international masters such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, César, is not thanks to politicians, but to the will of this wealthy and serious couple of contemporary art collectors.

 

Opened to the public in July 1979 in Hora, the island’s main town, the museum is exactly what you wouldn’t expect to find in this kind of places. If you ask to meet him, its director Kyriakos Koutsomalis will kindly tell you what an extraordinary experience is to run a museum so far from the international art hot-spots. He will also explain how he helped the Goulandris to build a world class collection, which includes names such as Vincent Van Gogh, Auguste Rodin, Roy Lichtenstein, but which actually never focused on the market values.

 

As he told us a couple of years ago in occasion of our visit at the museum, the Goulandris’ didn’t look for good investments, on the contrary their aim was to get the best quality they could afford, and even if they spent most on their working time between New York and London, they were always open and supportive toward artists coming from their native land. That is why the main wing of their unconventional museum of modern art was originally dedicated to sculpturer Michael Tombros who, like Basil Goulandris, was born in Andros. And that is also why, in spite of being interested in modern and contemporary art, they also supported the opening of the inspiring Museum of Archeology located in the Hora’s main square, just a few steps away from the building hosting the moca.

 

At this point it comes to mind what Mr. Antoine De Galbert, founder of La Maison Rouge in Paris, replied to those who were obstructing the plan of his private Foundation, who accused him to use culture as a mean not to pay taxes: “Surely I will administrate this money better that any politician would do”. It is a matter of fact that also in the case of the Goulandris Foundation, it would have been very difficult for a small town located on an island where no airport is available and that requires at least three hours of sailing to be reached, to have two museums of this kind without the help of this generous couple. Not all the oligarchs are the same.

January 26, 2015