9 نوفمبر 2026
William Kentridge's rusted steel figures now walk among the kouroi at the National Archaeological Museum, which also holds the Mycenaean gold of Pylos of Nestor. EMST keeps Niki Kanagini's retrospective up into February. From November the archaeological museum is free on the first and third Sundays, handy as Athens gets its first proper rain.
National Archaeological MuseumUntil 24 January
Seven rust-red figures from Kentridge's Frieze walk among the kouroi and sphinxes, one carrying a megaphone. His Orpheus drawings hang beside an ivory Mycenaean lyre and a krater showing Orpheus, and a Pepper's Ghost diorama makes figures appear and vanish.
EMST National Museum of Contemporary ArtUntil 14 February
The floor of Rose, Blue, Teal (1979) has been remade, and some of Niki Kanagini's participatory installations work again. Around them sit her large tapestries and Manuscripts; This Is Athens calls it post-war Greek art "beyond the usual names".
National Archaeological MuseumUntil 31 January
A gold-capped agate seal from the Griffin Warrior's grave shows two warriors fighting over a third, cut in sub-millimetre detail. Also here: the only known Mycenaean crown, and the Linear B tablet that confirmed the script was Greek.
Benaki Museum Pireos 138Until 31 January
Gadhafi, Netanyahu and Elon Musk hang beside Adele and Al Pacino, all in unretouched close-ups by a photographer with more than 30 TIME covers. Then come early portraits from Paros, shot against the plain white he later used for presidents.
Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation (Athens)Until 15 February
Toulouse-Lautrec's first Moulin Rouge poster, the 1891 print To Vima says made him famous almost overnight, hangs beside Bonnard's France-Champagne. About 90 posters and drawings hang over velvet carpet, with Lumière films mocking the Paris poster ban.
DESTE Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art (Athens)Closes 26 November
You walk in on Douglas Gordon's slow pan around a kissing couple, near David Shrigley's sign Tomorrow is Cancelled. ArtReview found some works "sharply contemporary" and the show at times a "greatest hits" of past DESTE exhibitions.
DESTE Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art (Athens)
Group show of 49 artists born 1960 to 1980 from the Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Massimiliano Gioni with the New Museum.
Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Centre (Foundation of the Hellenic World)
Works by about seventy contemporary figurative painters from the Frissiras Collection, plus Vlasis Frissiras's own recent paintings.
Museum of Cycladic Art
Two large fabric and mixed-media works by Eugenia Vereli, drawing on dreams, mythology and folk art, shown in the museum's café.
Benaki Museum of Greek Culture
Seventeen works lent by the UK Government Art Collection, including Thomas Phillips’s portrait of Lord Byron, hung within the permanent display.
Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum
About 25 collections of objects Ilias Lalaounis designed between 1970 and 2002, staged as a dining room, living room and study, honouring Lila Lalaounis.
Benaki Museum of Greek Cultureمجاني
Odysseas Fokas’s Autumn Landscape and Georgios Roilos’s The Army Officer, shown in the mansion’s reception area.
Benaki Museum of Greek Culture
Benaki objects shown beside their reproductions in the pages of Cahiers d’Art, with an immersive video installation by Natalia Papadopoulou.
National Archaeological Museum
The museum's first solo Kentridge show sets his Orpheus and Eurydice works among kouroi, sphinxes and funerary antiquities.
Megaron Athens Concert Hall (annexM)مجاني
Site-specific show on people and nature: a disc of raw salt, a light sculpture of the Moon in real phases, and Breathe (2000).
Benaki Museum Pireos 138
Portrait photographer Platon's first major museum retrospective in Athens, from world leaders and cultural icons to human rights defenders, plus photographs from Paros.
National Archaeological Museum
214 objects from Messenia trace a Mycenaean power centre and the Palace of Nestor at Ano Englianos, with excavation diaries and archival photographs.
Benaki Museum of Greek Culture
Sephardic and Romaniote costumes and objects of worship from the 17th to early 20th century, added to the permanent display.
EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art
Retrospective of Greek artist Niki Kanagini (1933-2008), from tapestries to participatory installations, with works from a promised family gift.
Benaki Museum Pireos 138
Retrospective of painter Alecos Levidis with over five hundred works: color compositions, drawings, book covers, notebooks, murals, installations and stage sets.
Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation (Athens)
About 90 works by 15 artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Mucha, Steinlen and Bonnard, on Parisian posters and life from 1880 to 1900.
B & M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music
Archive show on architect Christos Papoulias (d. 2024), with drawings, models and his dialogue with artists such as Jannis Kounellis and Brice Marden.
B & M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music
Kylie Manning's first institutional solo show in Greece, with new works and loans, on the foundation's second floor.
Bathhouse of the Winds
Photographs, documents and survivor interviews on Greek Jewry from liberation to the late 1970s, shown at the Bathhouse of the Winds in Plaka.
رسالة قصيرة بين حين وآخر، كلما افتُتح شيء جديد يستحق وقتك.
