The Museum
The Averoff Museum of Μοdern Greek Art has operated in Metsovo, district of Ioannina, since August 1988. Its permanent exhibition comprises representative works by the major Greek painters, printmakers and sculptors of the 19th and 20th century, such as Gyzis, Lytras, Volanakis, Iakovides, Parthenis, Maleas, Galanis, Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Moralis, Tetsis, and many others. The museum’s Collection is regarded as one of the most complete and important of this period.
The Averoff Museum was inaugurated on 27 August 1988 by its founder, Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza, who had long wished to create a small yet exceptional Museum in his hometown. The Collection’s main corpus comprises the 200 works by Greek artists of the 19th and 20th centuries contributed by the founder and bequeathed to the Foundation, together with the three-storey building that he built especially to house his Collection. The fact that the Collection was created from the outset with the intention of founding a Museum also determined to a certain extent its museological character.
In 1994, the Museum building underwent expansion and the New Wing opened. The facilities were updated, new exhibition galleries and auxiliary spaces were created, and the collection was significantly augmented. In 1995, the Children’s Workshop of the Museum began operating. In 1997, the Dimitrios Tsamis Gallery was inaugurated to house an important body of prints and drawings by Greek artists from the period 1920-1960.
Made possible by a generous donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Averoff Art Gallery’s accessibility improvement project (elevator, external and internal step-free access, hoist, accessible toilet) was recently completed so that our facilities are now accessible to people with disabilities or impairments.
The Museum has recently been added to the list of Accredited/Certified Museums in Greece and has been awarded the "Accredited Museum" label by the Ministry of Culture, after a long process of checks and technical adjustments to the state's specifications.
Today, thirty years after its founding, the works of the Collection have greatly multiplied in number and the Museum organizes major temporary exhibitions and events on an annual basis. The Museum currently attracts some 20,000 visitors a year from all over Greece and many school groups from the area.
In addition to the Permanent Exhibition, the museum mounts temporary thematic, retrospective, group, and other special-interest exhibitions with art works selected from other museums and private collections in Greece and abroad.
Its other events include scientific symposiums, meetings, tours, educational programs, and creative workshops. The Children’s Workshop of the Museum operates on a regular basis for the children of the region. Lastly, of special note is the museum’s extensive publishing enterprise.
