Greek collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos revealed plans Wednesday to donate hundreds of works from his collection to four institutions: Athens’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), London’s Tate, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and New York’s Guggenheim Museum.
All told, 350 works by 142 artists are headed to those museums, with major pieces by figures like Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Lynda Benglis, Paul Chan, and Isaac Julien among them.
In an unusual arrangement, the Guggenheim and the MCA Chicago will share their 100-work gift. U.S. museums have shared acquisitions before, but never before have two institutions co-owned a gift this sizable and significant.
EMST’s gift was rich in works by Greek artists, Tate’s featured pieces by significant British ones, and the Guggenheim and MCA Chicago got major sculptures and installations of the 1990s.
In a statement, Daskalopoulos, a mainstay on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, said, “Art takes its meaning and exerts its influence only through its interaction with the public. This has led to my decision to gift the better part of my collection to important contemporary art museums, so that they are cared for and preserved for future generations, so that the works are accessible to a broad audience, and so that they will remain in dialogue with the art of the future. This act transforms a private collection into a public resource.”
Below, a look at some of the works heading straight from Daskalopoulos’s collection to some of the world’s biggest museums.
