The Must-See Athens Art Exhibitions of Summer 2026
- National Museum of Contemporary Art Αthens, Leof. Andrea Siggrou 51-53, Athina 117 43
- Ongoing
The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMΣT) is always a worthwhile stop for anyone looking to understand the Greek contemporary scene. This summer, nine exhibitions unfold across the museum’s six floors, housed in the former FIX brewery on Syngrou Avenue, one of Athens’s most important surviving spaces of postwar industrial modernism. Located near the Acropolis and the city center, the building was redesigned and converted into a museum beginning in the 2000s by 3SK Stylianidis Architects, with collaborators including I. Mouzakis and Tim Ronalds Architects, before finally opening in full in 2020.
“South by Southeast” offers a compelling perspective on contemporary Greek art by staging a major rehanging of EMΣT’s collection curated by director Katerina Gregos and positioning Greece as a vital cultural crossroads connecting the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa, rather than the periphery of Europe.
Bringing together recent acquisitions, donations and existing holdings, the selection proposes a far more layered and plural understanding of Greek identity, shaped by migration, exchange, conflict and overlapping histories. Through major works by artists including Mona Hatoum, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Diana Al-Hadid, Monira Al Qadiri, Lynda Benglis and Pier Paolo Calzolari, the exhibition not only proves the scope and ambition of the museum’s collection but also reframes the Mediterranean, southeastern Europe and the wider Near East as generative centers of artistic production, critical thought and cultural innovation rather than marginal zones of European modernity.
Also on view this summer is a retrospective devoted to Niki Kanagini, one of the most distinctive women artists of postwar Greece. Moving from monumental tapestries to participatory installations, Kanagini challenged both gender conventions and the boundaries between applied and fine art. On another floor, George Lappas‘s “Art Always Begins With the Word ‘Supposing'” focuses on the more conceptual and installation-based side of his practice, where giant trucks, trailers, machinery and illuminated letters become luminous, uncanny environments and powerful allegories of the human psyche and social contradiction.
Near the entrance, a revealing survey of Greek avant-garde artist Stathis Logothetis shows how radically he expanded the possibilities of painting. By treating canvas, pigment and stretcher as analogs for skin, blood and bone, and by activating works through bodily action, audience participation and exposure to natural decay, Logothetis anticipated the idea of an expanded field of painting. His work pursued this territory with a freedom and intensity comparable to Arte Povera, Gutai and Viennese Actionism, while also recalling artists such as Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana.
