(Highlights) DEBRA KERR

Debra Kerr is the Executive Director of Intuit - the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. She was previously at the John G. Shedd Aquarium for 17 years - she is a past board member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, past chair and instructor for its Professional Development Committee and management courses, past chair of the zoo and aquarium committee for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, and former board member of the National Veterans Art Museum. 

She currently serves on the board for the Merit School of Music and the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Leaders Council. She frequently presents on issues related to museum relevance, teen empowerment and activating the public for social good.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process. 

DEBRA KERR

Debra Kerr is the Executive Director of Intuit - the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. She was previously at the John G. Shedd Aquarium for 17 years - she is a past board member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, past chair and instructor for its Professional Development Committee and management courses, past chair of the zoo and aquarium committee for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, and former board member of the National Veterans Art Museum. 

She currently serves on the board for the Merit School of Music and the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Leaders Council.She frequently presents on issues related to museum relevance, teen empowerment and activating the public for social good.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process. 

(Highlights) CHRIS DERCON

Museum director, curator, and cultural producer at large, Chris Dercon is the President of the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, an umbrella group of national museums in France. His career in major cultural institutions across Europe spans several decades. From 2011 to 2016, he was director of London's Tate Modern. He has been program director of MoMA PS1 in New York, and has served as director of the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and Berlin's Volksbühne theater. He is also a presenter, writer and maker of cultural documentaries.
www.grandpalais.fr

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

CHRIS DERCON

Museum director, curator, and cultural producer at large, Chris Dercon is the President of the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, an umbrella group of national museums in France. His career in major cultural institutions across Europe spans several decades. From 2011 to 2016, he was director of London's Tate Modern. He has been program director of MoMA PS1 in New York, and has served as director of the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and Berlin's Volksbühne theater. He is also a presenter, writer and maker of cultural documentaries.
www.grandpalais.fr

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process. 

(Highlights) SUSAN FISHER STERLING

Director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., Susan Fisher Sterling has built her career and the stature of the museum around the message of equity for women through excellence in the arts.

Unusual for the museum field, Sterling has dedicated her entire career to advancing NMWA’s mission.As an associate curator, curator of modern and contemporary art, and then chief curator/deputy director, she spent her first 20 years organizing exhibitions and publications of contemporary women artists.

Sterling assumed the directorship of the museum in 2008. During her ten-year tenure the museum has flourished, and has regularly received the highest Charity Navigator rating of 4 stars for sound fiscal and programmatic management. In 2017–18, NMWA celebrated its 30th anniversary with Washington Post “best pick” exhibitions like Women House and its annual gala honoring renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.
A life-long champion of women through the arts, Sterling has received National Orders of Merit from Brazil and Norway and the President’s Award of the Women’s Caucus for Art. In 2017 she was named one of the Most Powerful Women in Washington by Washingtonian magazine.

Photo: Michele Mattei

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is such a necessary institution, and you've been here over 30 years, almost since the beginning. What was your vision coming in and how has that evolved over the years?

SUSAN FISHER STERLING

I came to work at the National Museum of Women in the Arts thirty-two years ago. I really took to the idea that the museum was controversial, that a lot of men said, "Why do you need a women's museum? There are so many other museums. Why do women have to be separated?" I think feminists also said similar things sometimes. "Do we need to have a separate museum for women? Couldn't we just make sure that women are in all the other museums?" It's interesting, too, because some of the people who were more conservative, more traditionalist, would say things like, "Well, we're not sure we like this feminist concept." So it was very interesting to see the triangulation of opinions about the museum.

❧

The way we exhibit the collection is based on themes, themes that are developed by our curatorial team and often in conjunction with our educators as well as our library. The reason for this goes back a really long way. It goes back to the founding of the museum, at a time when I was a curator, and frankly, I did not have enough works to be able to show the collection thematically. So the question becomes, why did we want to do that? The answer is that in some ways, particularly with our collection, which is mostly European and American, when you take a look at Western art history, chronology tends to subvert or discount women and people of color, because technically we show up sort of late to the game. The training opportunities were different. If you look at the 18th century, you find a lot of portraits, you find still lifes, various sorts of imagery or types of painting that women were seen as being able to do, but men were able to do other kinds of work which were highest in this hierarchy. So we never were really comfortable with this notion of a chronology that perpetrated or put forward a hierarchy in the arts. Some four or five years ago, my charge to our chief curator and our team asked, do we have enough works now in the collection? Because the collection is about 5000 works now. When I started, it was about six hundred. So do we have enough works now to be able to create thematic installations within our galleries, our collection galleries that tease out themes that are important? Vis-à-vis women, but yet also just important. Can we mix the different eras in a way that's responsible, where the art really talks to one another?

❧

Many, many people come to us because of contemporary art and they're very interested in seeing contemporary art, which goes a little bit against the idea of many museums where the historical work seems to be most important to people. I think that's partly a realization that women artists came later to the game and so modern and contemporary art is where women artists have really shown their stuff, if you will. The historical work, while it's very important to the story, needs to be interspersed and looked at in relation to contemporary art and contemporary themes so as to continue to have a real relevance. That's a curious thing for us because people are coming to us for something we have to offer that might be different from the large municipal or encyclopedic museum. So in a way, we've been able to shift the discussion and also still showcase those great persevering, exceptional talents of the past that really were able to succeed, way against the odds, totally against the odds.

The shift was from being a museum that reinserted women into the history of art to a more inclusive agenda, which is to champion women through the arts. It allows for the excellence of women. It enables the museum to have programs like the Women, Arts, and Social Change programming that involves women artists at the center of social change or social action. It also talks about women as change agents.

❧

And so museums like the National Museum of Women in the Arts that are permissioned to do more were created with that new way of thinking about ourselves. While at the same time we continue to do the work of the past, reinserting women into the history of art, our programs enable us to showcase or bring to the fore contemporary women artists who are doing great work. It allows us to bridge the past with the present and see that sort of future for ourselves.

I mean, we really are ciphers and not just ciphers, but also integrally involved in these issues that are important to our communities. You can see how what's happening with the pandemic is now layered upon what was already a concern that was our focus for the year in that programming.

But it's a really good model for how you can bridge arts and social change and point to women and artists as being at the center of that. It will be interesting to talk about spirituality in the sense of how do you have joy, how do you keep a spiritual life? How do you feel connected to other spaces, other sorts of thoughts in the midst of difficult times? What kind of artwork might come of that? Is our spiritual life something that we should take very seriously, not just during the pandemic, but afterwards?

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What do you feel about the idea of artistic genius?

FISHER STERLING

"Genius" is such an interesting term. Just like "visionary." Who decides? It's oftentimes the case that men decide.

And certainly, you have this idea of the solitary genius, the rebel, the working in the garret. The idea that genius will out, no matter what. Geniuses always know exactly what they're thinking about, and they create this amazing work and everybody recognizes it right away.

Certainly, there are interesting ways to think about mathematical genius. There are also interesting ways to think about artistic genius. Who is a genius for people who are social philosophers? All different manners of things that people call genius. The truth is there's a system that props that up and says this person's a genius, but that person's not.

Most often that leads to a whole body of folks who are left out, because at least in the past, with all kinds of 19th-century brain studies, there were all these studies that wanted to prove the inferiority of everybody other than a white male.

I think that the concept of genius at this point in my world is debunked. But that doesn't mean that I don't want women artists to be seen as geniuses, because that's a term that people understand in the world of the popular press or just the general population. So, you want to play on the field that's given. When I was working with Carrie Mae Weens, I liked to say, just because there's such a thing as the male gaze, doesn't mean you shouldn't stare that gaze down.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Katherine Capristo with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

SUSAN FISHER STERLING

Director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., Susan Fisher Sterling has built her career and the stature of the museum around the message of equity for women through excellence in the arts.

Unusual for the museum field, Sterling has dedicated her entire career to advancing NMWA’s mission.As an associate curator, curator of modern and contemporary art, and then chief curator/deputy director, she spent her first 20 years organizing exhibitions and publications of contemporary women artists.

Sterling assumed the directorship of the museum in 2008. During her ten-year tenure the museum has flourished, and has regularly received the highest Charity Navigator rating of 4 stars for sound fiscal and programmatic management. In 2017–18, NMWA celebrated its 30th anniversary with Washington Post “best pick” exhibitions like Women House and its annual gala honoring renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.
A life-long champion of women through the arts, Sterling has received National Orders of Merit from Brazil and Norway and the President’s Award of the Women’s Caucus for Art. In 2017 she was named one of the Most Powerful Women in Washington by Washingtonian magazine.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is such a necessary institution, and you've been here over 30 years, almost since the beginning. What was your vision coming in and how has that evolved over the years?

SUSAN FISHER STERLING

I came to work at the National Museum of Women in the Arts thirty-two years ago. I really took to the idea that the museum was controversial, that a lot of men said, "Why do you need a women's museum? There are so many other museums. Why do women have to be separated?" I think feminists also said similar things sometimes. "Do we need to have a separate museum for women? Couldn't we just make sure that women are in all the other museums?" It's interesting, too, because some of the people who were more conservative, more traditionalist, would say things like, "Well, we're not sure we like this feminist concept." So it was very interesting to see the triangulation of opinions about the museum.

❧

The way we exhibit the collection is based on themes, themes that are developed by our curatorial team and often in conjunction with our educators as well as our library. The reason for this goes back a really long way. It goes back to the founding of the museum, at a time when I was a curator, and frankly, I did not have enough works to be able to show the collection thematically. So the question becomes, why did we want to do that? The answer is that in some ways, particularly with our collection, which is mostly European and American, when you take a look at Western art history, chronology tends to subvert or discount women and people of color, because technically we show up sort of late to the game. The training opportunities were different. If you look at the 18th century, you find a lot of portraits, you find still lifes, various sorts of imagery or types of painting that women were seen as being able to do, but men were able to do other kinds of work which were highest in this hierarchy. So we never were really comfortable with this notion of a chronology that perpetrated or put forward a hierarchy in the arts. Some four or five years ago, my charge to our chief curator and our team asked, do we have enough works now in the collection? Because the collection is about 5000 works now. When I started, it was about six hundred. So do we have enough works now to be able to create thematic installations within our galleries, our collection galleries that tease out themes that are important? Vis-à-vis women, but yet also just important. Can we mix the different eras in a way that's responsible, where the art really talks to one another?

❧

Many, many people come to us because of contemporary art and they're very interested in seeing contemporary art, which goes a little bit against the idea of many museums where the historical work seems to be most important to people. I think that's partly a realization that women artists came later to the game and so modern and contemporary art is where women artists have really shown their stuff, if you will. The historical work, while it's very important to the story, needs to be interspersed and looked at in relation to contemporary art and contemporary themes so as to continue to have a real relevance. That's a curious thing for us because people are coming to us for something we have to offer that might be different from the large municipal or encyclopedic museum. So in a way, we've been able to shift the discussion and also still showcase those great persevering, exceptional talents of the past that really were able to succeed, way against the odds, totally against the odds.

The shift was from being a museum that reinserted women into the history of art to a more inclusive agenda, which is to champion women through the arts. It allows for the excellence of women. It enables the museum to have programs like the Women, Arts, and Social Change programming that involves women artists at the center of social change or social action. It also talks about women as change agents.

❧

And so museums like the National Museum of Women in the Arts that are permissioned to do more were created with that new way of thinking about ourselves. While at the same time we continue to do the work of the past, reinserting women into the history of art, our programs enable us to showcase or bring to the fore contemporary women artists who are doing great work. It allows us to bridge the past with the present and see that sort of future for ourselves.

I mean, we really are ciphers and not just ciphers, but also integrally involved in these issues that are important to our communities. You can see how what's happening with the pandemic is now layered upon what was already a concern that was our focus for the year in that programming.

But it's a really good model for how you can bridge arts and social change and point to women and artists as being at the center of that. It will be interesting to talk about spirituality in the sense of how do you have joy, how do you keep a spiritual life? How do you feel connected to other spaces, other sorts of thoughts in the midst of difficult times? What kind of artwork might come of that? Is our spiritual life something that we should take very seriously, not just during the pandemic, but afterwards?

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What do you feel about the idea of artistic genius?

FISHER STERLING

"Genius" is such an interesting term. Just like "visionary." Who decides? It's oftentimes the case that men decide.

And certainly, you have this idea of the solitary genius, the rebel, the working in the garret. The idea that genius will out, no matter what. Geniuses always know exactly what they're thinking about, and they create this amazing work and everybody recognizes it right away.

Certainly, there are interesting ways to think about mathematical genius. There are also interesting ways to think about artistic genius. Who is a genius for people who are social philosophers? All different manners of things that people call genius. The truth is there's a system that props that up and says this person's a genius, but that person's not.

Most often that leads to a whole body of folks who are left out, because at least in the past, with all kinds of 19th-century brain studies, there were all these studies that wanted to prove the inferiority of everybody other than a white male.

I think that the concept of genius at this point in my world is debunked. But that doesn't mean that I don't want women artists to be seen as geniuses, because that's a term that people understand in the world of the popular press or just the general population. So, you want to play on the field that's given. When I was working with Carrie Mae Weens, I liked to say, just because there's such a thing as the male gaze, doesn't mean you shouldn't stare that gaze down.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Katherine Capristo with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

NICOLE FLEETWOOD

Dr. Nicole Fleetwood is an educator and author whose work explores Black cultural history, visual, media, and gender studies and mass incarceration. She earned her B.Phil from Miami University and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Fleetwood currently serves as an Associate Professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University and is a member of their press editorial committee. She has also been published in several scholarly journals, co/curated exhibitions on art and mass incarceration, and received prestigious grants and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship, the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, and many more.
Marking Time Exhibition is at MoMA PS1, through Apr 4, 2021
Marking Time - Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration is published by Harvard University Press

(Highlights) REEM BASSOUS

Reem Bassous received her Bachelor of Arts from The Lebanese American University in Beirut. Lebanon and her master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University in Washington DC. She started teaching drawing and painting in 2001 at The George Washington University, taught at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa for 9 years, and is currently an instructor at Leeward Community College at the University of Hawaiʻi. Bassous’ work is in permanent collections which include the Honolulu Museum of Art and Shangri La Museum for Islamic Art, Culture and Design.

REEM BASSOUS

The truth of the matter is that there are some people who are born to be creative and they're going to be artists. And the importance of fostering that is necessary, because if we each fulfill our purpose as humans, then society is better off for it. So in other words, if I had been anything else other than what I have become, I would have only been living up to half of my potential. And so that's really important to address that. I have a lot of students whose parents don't want them to be artists because it doesn't make money, but that means they're only living up to half of their potential because they're truly meant to be artists. And so society needs to shift this understanding on what is important. 

 THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I was wondering, as you are beginning a work of art, these works on paper, these paintings, what do you begin with. Is it feelings or memories you have or what you would want the audience to experience?

BASSOUS

That's a great question. A lot of the work that I work with is based on my memory as a survivor of the Lebanese civil war.

Beirut is a very layered city, having been destroyed now eight times, it was previously destroyed seven times. And so it was first settled 5000 years ago. So throughout the city, you see these layers of history. You see these Roman excavations.

And so it makes a lot of sense for me to layer the canvas in a certain way, so that as I am layering, I'm also excavating and I'm erasing and I'm digging into the surface. And so there are a lot of things to consider when making an image. I always tell my students, when you're painting, you're not coloring in. It's a lifelong learning experience to understand the material of paint.

 THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I'm very interested in memory as well. And it's interesting because if you do speak to people who have not had maybe not even just war experiences, but haven't had traumatic experiences in their youth, they often don't have or they say they don't remember a lot from their childhood. It's interesting, you know, when somebody takes something from you or somebody marks you in a way, then you remember you have a scar you have or psychic scar, metaphor scar. So you were talking about living in the state of vigilance. You are aware, you know, you have to protect yourself. So in some way it can, I think, kind of trains the artistic practice, which is one of noticing and taking in.

BASSOUS

It would be very pretentious of me to say that this is not a cathartic practice. It absolutely is.

And I don't mean for it to be necessarily. But I just remember, for example, I kept having this recurring dream of the shelter that we used to hide in. And it was always the same dream going down the steps into darkness, basically. And finally, I worked for months on this one painting of that exact dream. And then I stopped having the dream. And that was after about 15 years, of having this dream, very, very recurrently. And so it's just interesting, again, you know, there's so much we don't know about how the mind works. I'm certainly not a psychologist to be able to analyze that. But I do remember quite a bit from that time period. I remember almost everything. And I talked to family members and they seemed to have blocked a lot of it out. But I remember quite a bit and I remember things and details down to, for example, how shattering glass looked as it fell. Things, you know, very, very small details tend to stick in my mind.

 THE CREATIVE PROCESS

All right. I think there's something that we have been asking people and now I think particularly with the pandemic and also for you being distant from your family in Beirut. Our thoughts are on the future. And we have time now to reflect on how we might work towards giving a better future to the next generation. I know you must think about that. Also with your teaching.

BASSOUS

Yes. I think that there is a struggle that a lot of art teachers are going through nationwide and worldwide. I don't know how it is in Europe, frankly, but in the states, there is much less emphasis on the importance of the arts in public schools, for example, and in universities. So it makes me very sad because the arts and the humanities in general are critical in creating a conscientious society, a feeling society, a society that cannot only achieve but can ethically achieve. And so I think that people constantly underestimate the importance of that. And, you know, we talk about how detrimental binary thinkers can be sometimes. Binary thinkers are the way they are because they don't understand the importance of nuance.  And that nuance is often that gray zone is often where the arts lie. And I think that that's such an important aspect of society.  I mean, like I said, we don't just need to achieve. We need to achieve with meaning and with heart and with morality

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Majd Al Whaidi. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. Music was by Ziad Rahbani.

REEM BASSOUS

Reem Bassous received her Bachelor of Arts from The Lebanese American University in Beirut. Lebanon and her master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University in Washington DC. She started teaching drawing and painting in 2001 at The George Washington University, taught at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa for 9 years, and is currently an instructor at Leeward Community College at the University of Hawaiʻi. Bassous’ work is in permanent collections which include the Honolulu Museum of Art and Shangri La Museum for Islamic Art, Culture and Design.

REEM BASSOUS

The truth of the matter is that there are some people who are born to be creative and they're going to be artists. And the importance of fostering that is necessary, because if we each fulfill our purpose as humans, then society is better off for it. So in other words, if I had been anything else other than what I have become, I would have only been living up to half of my potential. And so that's really important to address that. I have a lot of students whose parents don't want them to be artists because it doesn't make money, but that means they're only living up to half of their potential because they're truly meant to be artists. And so society needs to shift this understanding on what is important. 

 THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I was wondering, as you are beginning a work of art, these works on paper, these paintings, what do you begin with. Is it feelings or memories you have or what you would want the audience to experience?

BASSOUS

That's a great question. A lot of the work that I work with is based on my memory as a survivor of the Lebanese civil war.

Beirut is a very layered city, having been destroyed now eight times, it was previously destroyed seven times. And so it was first settled 5000 years ago. So throughout the city, you see these layers of history. You see these Roman excavations.

And so it makes a lot of sense for me to layer the canvas in a certain way, so that as I am layering, I'm also excavating and I'm erasing and I'm digging into the surface. And so there are a lot of things to consider when making an image. I always tell my students, when you're painting, you're not coloring in. It's a lifelong learning experience to understand the material of paint.

 THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I'm very interested in memory as well. And it's interesting because if you do speak to people who have not had maybe not even just war experiences, but haven't had traumatic experiences in their youth, they often don't have or they say they don't remember a lot from their childhood. It's interesting, you know, when somebody takes something from you or somebody marks you in a way, then you remember you have a scar you have or psychic scar, metaphor scar. So you were talking about living in the state of vigilance. You are aware, you know, you have to protect yourself. So in some way it can, I think, kind of trains the artistic practice, which is one of noticing and taking in.

BASSOUS

It would be very pretentious of me to say that this is not a cathartic practice. It absolutely is.

And I don't mean for it to be necessarily. But I just remember, for example, I kept having this recurring dream of the shelter that we used to hide in. And it was always the same dream going down the steps into darkness, basically. And finally, I worked for months on this one painting of that exact dream. And then I stopped having the dream. And that was after about 15 years, of having this dream, very, very recurrently. And so it's just interesting, again, you know, there's so much we don't know about how the mind works. I'm certainly not a psychologist to be able to analyze that. But I do remember quite a bit from that time period. I remember almost everything. And I talked to family members and they seemed to have blocked a lot of it out. But I remember quite a bit and I remember things and details down to, for example, how shattering glass looked as it fell. Things, you know, very, very small details tend to stick in my mind.

 THE CREATIVE PROCESS

All right. I think there's something that we have been asking people and now I think particularly with the pandemic and also for you being distant from your family in Beirut. Our thoughts are on the future. And we have time now to reflect on how we might work towards giving a better future to the next generation. I know you must think about that. Also with your teaching.

BASSOUS

Yes. I think that there is a struggle that a lot of art teachers are going through nationwide and worldwide. I don't know how it is in Europe, frankly, but in the states, there is much less emphasis on the importance of the arts in public schools, for example, and in universities. So it makes me very sad because the arts and the humanities in general are critical in creating a conscientious society, a feeling society, a society that cannot only achieve but can ethically achieve. And so I think that people constantly underestimate the importance of that. And, you know, we talk about how detrimental binary thinkers can be sometimes. Binary thinkers are the way they are because they don't understand the importance of nuance.  And that nuance is often that gray zone is often where the arts lie. And I think that that's such an important aspect of society.  I mean, like I said, we don't just need to achieve. We need to achieve with meaning and with heart and with morality

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Majd Al Whaidi. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. Music was by Ziad Rahbani.

(Highlights) NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART · EMST · ATHENS

The National Museum of Contemporary Art EMST started its operation in Athens in 2000. With help from grants and funding, EMST was able to begin moving into a permanent museum space by 2015 and opened fully to the public in February 2020. This museum is the first of its kind in Greece, as much of the museums and culture are focused more on ancient history or foreign artists. Curators Daphne Vitali, Tina Pandi, and Elena Ganiti are focused on the areas of painting, sculpture, and engraving, while Stamatis Schizakis curates photography and audiovisual works.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process. 

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART · EMST · ATHENS

The National Museum of Contemporary Art EMST started its operation in Athens in 2000. With help from grants and funding, EMST was able to begin moving into a permanent museum space by 2015 and opened fully to the public in February 2020. This museum is the first of its kind in Greece, as much of the museums and culture are focused more on ancient history or foreign artists. Curators Daphne Vitali, Tina Pandi, and Elena Ganiti are focused on the areas of painting, sculpture, and engraving, while Stamatis Schizakis curates photography and audiovisual works.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.