Benaki: Exhibition about music -Miki’s scores, Manos’ letters, scan and listen to songs

Eleven emblematic Greek composers and lyricists are hosted in an interactive, diverse exhibition at the Ghika Gallery of the Benaki museum.

The Benaki Museum in collaboration with the Institute of Greek Musical Heritage (IEMH), organize the exhibition “I think it’s time to listen…” – The Institute of Greek Musical Heritage at the Ghika Art Gallery.

The musical creation of Greece in the exhibition of Benakis

Together, with the use of a free digital application designed specifically for the needs of this intervention, visitors will be able to use their mobile phones and headphones to discover more about how other “tenants” of the Gallery, poets , writers, directors, painters, choreographers collaborated with these composers, creating a multilayered network of creative relationships. In this context, three additional “condensers” of the artistic production of this generation were selected and presented for the particularity of their cases.

The exhibition, which will be inaugurated by Lina Mendoni, opens to the public on Thursday, April 25 and will last until Sunday, July 21, 2024. On the occasion of this exhibition, the opening hours of the Ghika Gallery are changing and are as follows: Thursday 10:00 – 22:00, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10:00 – 18:00.

Vamvakaris, Theodorakis, Konstantinidis, Mitropoulos, Xenakis, Xenos, G.A. Papaioannou, Sisilianos, Skalkotas, Tsitsanis, Hadjidakis and Stavros Xarchakos. What connects them?

The first eleven are housed in the permanent exhibition of the Benaki Museum / Ghika Art Gallery, at 3 Kriezotou Street, set up by the historical director of the museum, Angelos Delivorrias, almost “preservable” today. The exhibition focuses on the artistic and intellectual creation in Greece between the First World War and the Dictatorship.

The original action “I think it’s time to listen…” is an initiative of the newly founded Institute of Greek Musical Heritage, inaugurating a closer collaboration with the Benaki Museum.

The activity, curated by museologist Eratous Koutsoudakis and with the scientific assistance of the “Friends of Music” Association, invites us on a journey of (re)discovery of the work of these eleven emblematic composers, through the eyes of today and with the use of technology.

We can listen to musical samples of the composers, watch them talk to us, remember the – once upon a time – close creative and friendly relationships that united them.

The exhibition still allows us to observe how, and how differently, they continue to be a source of inspiration for new creators today.

“I think it’s time we listened”

The museum intervention entitled “I think it’s time to listen” works of course in an exemplary, exemplary way and for this reason, knowingly, fragmentarily.

It invites visitors to an energetic and personal exploration of the threads that bind creators together. It invites us to discover the imprint of an “ecosystem”, which, with the sometimes unexpected convergences and divergences of each participating creator, is today, almost a century later, absolutely present in our Greek reality.

It is transformed, transmuted, reinterpreted, but it is always here. The action derives its title from a phrase by Menis Koumandareas associated with Dimitris Mitropoulos and Konstantinos Cavafy.

And what role does Stavros Xarchakos play in this company?

The action concludes with an autonomous exhibition unit, which is both self-sustaining and completely dependent on the permanent exhibition and IEMK’s intervention in it.

It is a museum installation dedicated to Stavros Xarchakos, a living emblematic personality of our modern musical culture. It is hosted in the periodical exhibition area, on the ground floor of the Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, with the initiative of IEMK and offers us the opportunity to watch, in an evocative and modern technological environment, Stavros Xarhakos recount his memories of his creative association with the generation that inhabits the floors of the Gallery while evidence of his life and work is presented for the first time, before they take the road to the creation of an archive.

Interlocutor and fellow traveler of some of the most important of the so-called “30’s generation”, Xarchakos spans the decades creatively, with his work encompassing almost all musical genres in the history of Greek music: folk, rebetiko, “artistic folk” song, words music, theater and film music. The museum installation on the ground floor gives us the opportunity to get to know another Xarhakos better, the classical music composer, the student of the legendary Juilliard School in New York, the interlocutor of Leonard Bernstein and David Diamond, under the sounds of the composer’s important works .

The Ghika Gallery of the Benaki Museum

The six-storey building at 3 Kriezotou Street belonged entirely to the late painter Nikos Hatzikyriakos-Ghikas, where he lived and created for forty consecutive years until his death in September 1994. It was donated to the Benaki Museum by the artist while he was alive.

With its definitive transformation into a museum, in operation for the public since 2012, permanent exhibits remained the residence on the 4th floor, the artist’s workshop on the 5th floor and the gallery of his works on the 3rd floor, while the remaining free spaces were allocated for highlighting the intellectual and artistic creation of Greece in a particularly critical period, from the end of the First World War and the Asia Minor disaster to the eve of the Dictatorship of 1967, which is at the same time the climate in which N. Chatzikyriakos- Gikas lived and shaped his artistic perceptions. The curator of the permanent exhibition was Angelos Delivorias, the iconic director of the Benaki Museum for 40 years, for whom the creation of the collection of the Ghika Gallery and the organization of the exhibition, which is dense in evidence and meanings, was a personal bet.

The Institute of Greek Musical Heritage

The HELLENIC MUSIC HERITAGE INSTITUTE (IEMC), a member of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML), is an innovative scientific Institute with a public benefit character. It aims to collect, archive and digitize musical documents (scores, printed & digitized files, books, e-books, audio-visual & photographic material, ethnographic material, discography, press, theses), concerning music as an Art and as a Science.

The main goal of the IEMK is the creation of an easy-to-use database, a single Electronic Registry of free access archives, where information material on all types of Greek music is hosted: ancient Greek music, traditional, Byzantine, urban-folk, “artistic folk”, lyrics (“classical”), jazz, electronic-electroacoustic. The informative material also extends to the relationship of music with other performing arts (music for theater, opera, ballet, dance, performance) and music for cinema (soundtracks).

IEMK promotes research in an energetic way, funding original treatises, around music. It also collaborates with University Institutions of the country and abroad, with national and local cultural bodies, with museums and music schools, with the aim of developing educational and research programs, innovative technologies, as well as the creation of a cultural network for the management of the Greek musical heritage. It organizes and participates in conferences, workshops, festivals and exhibitions, concerning Greek musical culture and archive management. Thus, the IEMK functions as a channel of communication between agencies, the scientific community and society.

The exhibition is made possible thanks to the kind sponsorship of the Qualco Group and the Qualco Foundation. Mr. Orestis Tsakalotos, President of the Qualco Foundation, points out: “The exhibition is a typical example of the action of the Qualco Foundation, as one of the elements of our vision is the protection and promotion of our cultural heritage. We believe in meaningful collaborations and we are very happy that the exhibition is being realized at the Ghika Gallery – it is an example of an excellent collaboration between the Benaki Museum and the Institute of Greek Musical Heritage”.

The contributors to the exhibition at the Benaki Museum

The idea and curation of the exhibition belongs to museologist Erato Koutsoudakis. Scientific manager of the whole action as scientific director of IEMK, the associate professor of Music and Audiovisual Culture, at the Ionian University, Renata Dalianoudi. Scientific collaborators of the curator were musicologists Alexandros Harkiolakis, Director of the “Friends of Music” Association, Stefania Merakou, Director of the “Lilian Voudouri” Music Library and Valia Vrakas, head of the Greek Music Archive of the same organization. For the research and documentation of the archival material and in the planning of the action, museologist Eugenia Efthymiadou collaborated. The creation of the short films belongs to Abnormal Studio, the visual identity of the exhibition to the Schema creative office, while the directorial supervision of the Xarhakos screening belongs to Konstantinos Arvanitakis.

The I Think It’s Time To Listen digital app was developed by Interactive Light Designs. Special thanks for his contribution belong to the scientific curator of the Ghika Gallery, Konstantinos Papachristou.

The action was produced by Delta-Pi Productions on behalf of IEMK.