Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It looks, to the casual visitor, like there has been a gender-based coup in the cultural centres of Athens. Most obviously in Yael Bartana’s giant neon installation “What If Women Ruled the World?”, which adorns the long walls of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, signalling a year-long cycle of women-only exhibitions. But there is more. At the open-air Thision cinema, Cretan director Eva Nathena’s Murderess gives a coruscating account of the classic novel by Alexandros Papadiamantis, in which a vengeful widow takes action against the patriarchal values of her village in an unspeakably cruel manner. The results are pure Greek tragedy. If you take a seat — top tip alert — in the back of the right-hand side of the cinema, you have a clear view of the floodlit Acropolis, prompting the thought that these issues have beleaguered the city for millennia.Yet only recently have women joined these debates. Another spiky provocation arrives with the opening of a new show at the Museum of Cycladic Art celebrating the protean work of Cindy Sherman. They seem like unlikely bedfellows, the near-abstract Bronze-age figurines that form the permanent collection here — all but three are female — and the American artist’s obsessive photographic reinventions, which have turned self-portraiture into a profound investigation of gender identity.Yet the connections are there, and cannot help but encourage reflection: the mysteries surrounding the precise roles of the female deities celebrated in these islands all those years ago find an echo in Sherman’s obscure narratives. The multifarious roles undertaken by women are their common concern. If women had ruled the world in the 5,000 years separating the two sets of work, we would surely be more accustomed to such inquiries. The show is the latest in a series of contemporary art displays, commissioned every summer since 2008, that aim to complement the museum’s permanent collection. Featured artists have included Ai Weiwei, Louise Bourgeois and Sarah Lucas. The series was instigated by the museum’s current president and chief executive, Sandra Marinopoulou. Her remit when she succeeded Dolly Goulandris, her aunt who founded the museum, was to heighten its profile and bring younger people into its handsome neoclassical rooms. “We immediately saw the difference in the audience,” she says. “When I first suggested the idea to my aunt, she said it was fine as long as the artists we chose were already established. Because this was a museum, not a gallery.”In relative terms, the past 100 years have been an exceedingly busy time for the coveted sculptures, most of which have spent up to five millennia undisturbed in the barren Cycladic landscape. When they began to be widely discovered and circulated in the early part of the last century, they were immediately acknowledged as an influence on 20th-century Modernist artists such as Picasso, Giacometti and Brancusi.Goulandris, who had collected ancient Greek art, discovered the older Cycladic forms in the 1950s and “instantly fell in love with them”, says Marinopoulou; she built a collection, after acquiring the requisite licence, which she turned into a museum in 1986. An exhibition celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2006, Shaping the Beginning, was the first to bring in prestigious modern works and further embellished the reputation of the sculptures that had inspired them.It is a more recent exhibition, however, that has drawn attention, not only to the beauty and appeal of Cycladic art, but also to the arguments that currently surround their provenance and legitimate ownership.In November 2022, the museum put on display 15 of the most significant Cycladic works belonging to the American collector Leonard N Stern, calling the exhibition Homecoming. The simplicity of that title, however, masked a complex series of discussions that preceded the show, producing a deal that may just serve, its supporters contend, as a template for the future treatment of ownership and distribution of national cultural treasures. Stern knew Goulandris, shared her passion for Cycladic art and concurrently built his own collection. His dream, says Marinopoulou, was to display his 161-piece collection in New York. “He wanted his grandchildren to see it at the Met,” she says. But he had been thus far been unable to fulfil that project owing to Unesco rules over the status of moveable cultural property, even though none of the antiquities was listed as stolen from Greek territory. Following a series of discussions between Stern, the MCA and the Greek ministry of culture, a solution was found: the works would in effect be transferred into Greek ownership, and then officially loaned to the Metropolitan Museum for a 25-year display before returning to Greece. Thereafter, the three parties would further consult and co-operate on a rotating series of exhibitions. The “homecoming” celebrated in 2022 was a taster for the new arrangement. The 15 works were whisked back to New York and the “Leonard N Stern Collection on Loan from the Hellenic Republic”, as it is carefully labelled, duly opened at the Met in January.The deal, says Marinopoulou, was not without its complications, nor its dissenters. Its wording was meticulously crafted: the Stern collection could not be “donated” or “gifted” or “permanently loaned” to Greece as it is the official position of the Greek government that all Greek art belongs to Greece already. But thanks to good will and flexibility all round, she says, a compromise was found. The Met’s chief executive and director, Max Hollein, described the “revolutionary” project as a “truly collaborative development and amicable resolution that benefits everyone”. The Greek minister of culture, Lina Mendoni, described the agreement as “groundbreaking”, emphasising that the repatriation of antiquities to Greece remained a “key political priority” of her ministry. Critics of the deal inside Greece, however, described it as lacking in clarity and insufficiently rigorous. “It was not well received by the archaeological community, which I understand because they consider [the art works] as their own. And they are their own,” says Marinopoulou. “Maybe it is because it is such a long loan, 25 years, not one or two.“Yes, out of the 5,000 years that Cycladic art has been present, they will be spending 25 years at the Met. But then they are coming back. And during that time they will have an amazing exposure, they will not be in a warehouse. And they will be seen by the people as Greek art.” Britain has a similar issue that she may have heard about, I say. Did the Stern deal hold any lessons for those who are currently debating the possible repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece? “It shows that part of a collection can travel to another place, and be shown — but in order for that to happen, it has to be theoretically, by law, repatriated. I am not from the ministry, but from what I read, they don’t want a loan, any kind of loan, because the Marbles are Greek. If the British Museum would accept that they are Greek, it could make such a deal, it would open up exchanges, temporary exhibitions, anything.” But it could never be a loan? “Never. It wouldn’t work.”For now, the Museum of Cycladic Art is looking closer to home for its next project, the “Cycladic Identity” initiative, which will distribute small grants of up to €10,000 to individual islands for cultural, biodiversity and “intangible heritage” schemes. The area is one that is in danger of succumbing to some of the worst effects of mass tourism, and the initiative aims to preserve some of the local traditions that are under threat.Projects supported so far include the reopening to visitors of the famous marble quarries of Paros, the revival of folk music and storytelling in Kea, and the beginnings of a unified hiking route across the islands. Gastronomy too needs protecting, she says. “We don’t want to see the traditional Greek tavernas being taken over by sushi bars.”Asked to describe the intangible Cycladic spirit that was under threat, she talks of the region’s beauty and “toughness”. But she returns to the artefacts that have made such a remarkable impact on contemporary culture. They were the “silent witnesses” to an era, an aesthetic, a way of life, that continues to reverberate in the modern world.‘Cindy Sherman at Cycladic, Early Works’, to November 4, cycladic.grFind out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen
