Anna Kafetsi, founder of EMΣT museum in Athens, dies at 71

Anna Kafetsi, the founding director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMΣT), has died at the age of 71. A historian, theorist, and curator, she was a central figure in Greek and European contemporary art since the 1980s. Born in 1955, she studied philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne. From 1983 to 1999, she curated 20th-century collections at the National Gallery of Greece. She led EMΣT from its founding in 2000 until 2014, establishing it as a platform for research and dialogue across the Mediterranean, Balkans, Middle East, and Europe. Key exhibitions under her tenure include Metamorphoses of the Modern – The Greek Experience (1992), Russian Avant-Garde – The G. Costakis Collection (1995), Transcultures (2004), Videographies – The First Decades (2005), Politics of Art (2010), and Sonic Time: Speech–Sound–Silence (2012). She worked with artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Shirin Neshat, Konstantinos Parthenis, Theodoros Stamos, Vlassis Caniaris, Yannis Tsarouchis, Kimsooja, Carlos Garaicoa, and Chen Zhen. From 2016 to 2026, she directed the annexM Visual Arts Center at the Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall, continuing interdisciplinary projects. Her critical writings include catalogs, essays, and monographs on contemporary art in Southeast Europe.