The Museum of Byzantine Culture invites you cordially to the opening of the exhibition “Two Collections meet” on Friday 20 December at 20:00, in the Temporary Exhibition Wing “Kyriakos Krokos”.

In 2015 (30/11) the Municipality of Thessaloniki decided to give 109 icons and holy relics from the Collection of the Municipal Art Gallery to the Museum of Byzantine Culture as a loan for 30 years. The relevant ministerial decision (17-6-2016) set the initial borrowing for five years since the day of the delivery (11-11-2016), with the possibility of renewal. The aim of the borrowing is the preservation, maintenance and exhibition of the cultural goods of the Municipal Art Gallery by the Museum of Byzantine Culture.

Through the exhibition “Two Collections meet” the Museum of Byzantine Culture accomplishes the goals of this loan agreement providing to the wide audience and to specialists the Collection of the Municipal Art Gallery, after the conservation and the research of its icons and holy relics. Most of these items (23) are displayed for the first time.

The title of the exhibition “Two Collections meet” indicates the intention of this exhibition to compose a totality coming from the combining study of the objects of two collections: the one of the Municipal Art Gallery of Thessaloniki and the other of the Museum of Byzantine Culture.

The idea of this title sourced from the presence of work pieces of the same painter/workshop in both Collections while having a common operational purpose (architrave icons).

The temporary exhibition “Two collections meet” presents 129 cultural goods, portable icons, objects of private worship, liturgical items, vestments, holy relics from the Collections of the Municipal Art Gallery (50) and the Museum of Byzantine Culture (79) dated from the 14^th until the beginning of the 20^th century. Actually, 85 of those are displayed for the first time after their maintenance and scientific substitution in the Museum.

The exhibition wishes to display to the wide and target audience selected and representative examples of the orthodox religious art of the two Collections, as cultural works, but at the same time, as works of faith and piety with doctrinal content serving the needs of the Orthodox Church, the public and private worship.

The inauguration will be accompanied by the Veroe’ s Echo Choir (Choirmaster: Natela Ιntsouaeintse)