4 works at The Nationwide Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum in Athens had been vandalised earlier this week, allegedly by a Greek member of parliament who described the modern items as “blasphemous” to Christianity.
Nikolaos Papadopoulos, aided by one other particular person, is claimed to have attacked 4 works by the artist Christoforos Katsadiotis entitled: Icon 1, Icon 16, Icon 17, and Saint Christopher. The attackers allegedly smashed the glass instances housing the works, throwing them to the ground.
A museum spokesperson confirmed that the assaults on works included within the exhibition The Attract of the Weird had taken place, and alleged that Papadopoulos, alongside one different particular person, was certainly accountable.
Police detained Papadopoulos, a member of the right-wing ultra-religious Niki (Victory) social gathering, for a number of hours earlier than releasing him, in response to Related Press. The information company provides that Papadopoulos beforehand mentioned in parliament that one of many Greek work was offensive to Orthodox Christianity, the predominant faith in Greece. He was reportedly charged with “a misdemeanour for minor property harm”.
Final week Papadopoulos wrote an open letter to the director of The Nationwide Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Syrago Tsiara, saying: “The ‘works’ introduced in your periodic exhibition, particularly the Icon of the Virgin Mary embracing Christ and the vulgar falsification of Saint George, don’t represent artwork. They represent a direct assault on our religion, on our cultural identification, on the roots of our nation.”
Following the incident, Papadopoulos wrote on X that his request to Tsiara and the Greek tradition minister, Lina Mendoni, to withdraw the reveals was ignored. “I visited the exhibition with a view to see if, regardless of hope, the ‘inventive atrocities’ had been eliminated, because the exhibition is visited each day by tender schoolchildren,” he mentioned.
Following the assault, the museum’s board of administrators mentioned in a press release that the Nationwide Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum is institutionally dedicated to the gathering, preservation, promotion, and documentation of inventive creation.
“With a profound respect for inventive freedom, the board of administrators affirms its belief within the museum’s administration and totally helps its permitted inventive programme, fostering dialogue throughout numerous inventive actions, kinds, and views. We unequivocally condemn all acts of vandalism and violence, and any makes an attempt at censorship that threaten the liberty of inventive expression enshrined within the Structure of the Hellenic Republic.”
The artist behind the broken works, Katsadiotis, additionally defended free speech, telling Kathimerini that artists “have the proper to precise [their] private standpoint, to react and, in so doing, ask the questions they need to ask”.
