MOMus – Museum of Modern Art – Costakis Collection
Russian avant-garde from the Costakis Collection, in a restored Lazarist monastery west of the centre.
The museum occupies part of Moni Lazariston, a former monastery of the Lazarist (Vincentian) order built in the late 19th century at Stavroupoli in the western suburbs of Thessaloniki. The complex was restored as a cultural centre and the museum, then called the State Museum of Contemporary Art, was founded in 1997 for the city's year as European Capital of Culture. Since 2018 it has been one of the museums run by the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki, known as MOMus.
Its core is the Costakis Collection of Russian avant-garde art, assembled in Moscow by the Greek-Russian collector George Costakis and bought by the Greek state in 2000. More than 1,200 works by Malevich, Rodchenko, Popova, Kliun, Matyushin and their contemporaries cover the period from about 1900 to 1930 and appear in rotating displays alongside Greek and international modernist holdings. The museum also mounts temporary exhibitions and runs an education department, an archive and a research library.
Highlights
- Russian avant-garde works from the Costakis Collection
- Paintings and drawings by Malevich, Rodchenko and Popova
- Housed in the restored 19th-century Lazarist monastery of Stavroupoli
- Rotating displays drawn from more than 1,200 collection works
