AlMadar Tour: Benaki Museum

Mina Moraitou is the Curator of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art. She is an art historian specialized in the study of Islamic art with 30 years experience in the field of museums. She completed her studies at SOAS, University of London, where she received a Postgraduate Diploma in the History of Asian Art (1992) and a postgraduate degree (MA) in the History of Islamic Art (1996). Since 1992, she works at the Benaki Museum, she contributed to the creation of the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art (July 2004) and became the curator in 2012. She has coordinated and curated a number of exhibitions and publications for the Benaki Museum. Among them, the exhibitions Thomas Hope: Drawings of Ottoman Istanbul (2016 in Athens and 2017 in Sharjah); Iznik- a Fascination with Ceramics (2017); Islamic Calligraphy- the Art of Iranian Writing (2018); Road of Arabia (2019) and Iznik Ceramics at the Benaki Museum (2023). 

The Benaki Museum is the largest and oldest museum in Greece operating as a private foundation. It was founded in Athens in AH 1349/1930 CE by Antonis Benakis, a member of a distinguished Greek family from Alexandria, Egypt. The museum has grown considerably since then, and today the diverse Benaki collections are distributed in various buildings around Athens and beyond, each focused on a different area of Greek and world culture.

The Benaki Museum of Islamic Art houses the collection initially formed by Benakis. It has been enriched by other donations and now holds about 12,000 objects. The collection demonstrates the evolution of Islamic art from the 1st to 13th centuries AH/7th to 19th centuries CE. The collection is unique in Greece, a country situated on the crossroads of East and West. Indeed, it is the only museum in Southeast Europe dedicated to the arts of the Islamic world. In the past three decades, the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art has established itself as a center for presenting and promoting cultural and religious diversity.

After a successful collaboration in AH 1444/2023 CE, the Benaki Museum joins AlMadar to contribute to the celebration of the cultural heritage and artistic achievements of the Islamic world. The curatorial team has chosen to focus on geometry through a selection of objects that reveal its importance as a decorative motif, with its expression of infinity and rhythm, as well as its use in creating order and the division of decorative space.