The City of Athens in collaboration with the Culture Ministry is honouring Greece’s much-loved actress, activist, and politician Melina Mercouri, with a special exhibition at Technopolis in Gazi, which is set to open its doors on Tuesday, the 18th of January 2022.
The life and work of Melina Mercouri will be on display- through rich photographic and audiovisual material. Visitors will also have the chance to view some of her personal items, many of which will be exhibited for the first time.
Titled “Remember and Love Me”, the exhibition is to mark the occasion of Melina’s 100th anniversary of her birth, with visitors taken on a journey through three sections- based on Melina’s career in films, theatre as well as her political life. The aim of the event is to highlight the passionate artist who rose to international fame; as well as Melina’s love of her homeland and what she offered not only to Greece but to Greeks and Philhellenes worldwide.
“Melina – as we all call her – with her inexhaustible vitality and rare charm, with her intense dynamism and international radiance, the actress, the politician, the woman who was much loved, as she loved with passion, who defended to the end her ideas and beliefs, the “last Greek goddess,” comes to life again in Technopolis,” announced the organisers of the exhibition.
Mercouri was passionate about everything she did. From gracing the screen (she was most famous for her role as Ilya, on “Never on Sunday”) and stage in the early part of her life, to fighting the fascist junta that took control of Greece in 1967, to campaigning for the protection and promotion of culture in Europe, she became Greece’s most famous Minister for Culture; where she strongly advocated the return of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.
Items on display will include film and theatre costumes worn by Melina; vintage posters from her cinema career; photos of Mercouri with local Greek and international personalities such as Pope John Paul II, Queen Elizabeth, Salvador Dali, Indira Gandhi, Arthur Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, Omar Sharif, Ava Gardner, and Catherine Deneuve; original scripts with handwritten notes; letters; her dressing room; memorabilia, documents, and items she carried with her during her last trip to New York.
Address: Technopolis of Athens, Pireos Street 100, Athens
Dates: January 18 to March 11, 2022
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 11 am to 8 pm
Admission: Free entry
Images Courtesy of the Melina Mercouri Foundation