Collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos's NEON To Conclude After 'Having Fulfilled Its Mission'

A private initiative that helped reshape the presentation of contemporary art in Athens is preparing to close. NEON, the organization founded by collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos, will conclude its activities later this year, according to a statement that described the project as having fulfilled its cultural and social mission after 14 years.

Its final chapter is already underway. The closing project is a trilogy of exhibitions by Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz, titled“Michael Rakowitz & Ancient Cultures.” The first installment opened at the Acropolis Museum in May 2025, and the second followed in October. The third will take the form of a new commission to be installed at the Old Acropolis Museum when it reopens in the second half of 2026, after a 19-year closure for renovation.

That work will be the first piece of contemporary art placed at the ancient site. NEON said the final chapter will examine diaspora and the ways objects from different historical, geographical, and archaeological contexts can be brought together into layered narratives. The project is being presented with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Acropolis Museum, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens.

Under director Elina Kountouri, NEON mounted 44 exhibitions featuring artists including Tino Sehgal, Adrián Villar Rojas, Lynda Benglis, Antony Gormley, and Phyllida Barlow. It also organized projects for artists who are no longer living, among them Mike Kelley, Mario Merz, Louise Bourgeois, and Martin Kippenberger, which helped launch the initiative.

Beyond exhibitions, NEON commissioned more than 100 new works, nearly three-quarters of them by Greek artists. The list includes Marina Abramović, Igshaan Adams, El Anatsui, Anastasia Douka, Glenn Ligon, Teresa Margolles, Maria Papadimitriou, Rena Papaspyrou, Gala Porras-Kim, and Danh Vo.

The organization's footprint extended well beyond conventional museum spaces. Its projects appeared at EMST, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Ancient Agora, the Kerameikos Neighborhood, and even a parking space in central Athens. One work, Antony Gormley's“RULE II” (2019), is now on permanent view after Gormley donated it to the island of Delos in 2025.

NEON also invested €1.4 million to renovate the former Public Tobacco Factory into a contemporary culture center before handing it over to the Hellenic Parliament in 2023. According to the organization, 13 other Greek institutions received new equipment and facilities through exhibitions mounted there.

Daskalopoulos's influence has reached far beyond NEON itself. He appeared on 's Top 200 Collectors list every year from 2001 to 2020, and he donated 350 major contemporary artworks to four museums: 140 to EMST/National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, 110 to Tate, and 100 shared by the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

NEON's closure closes one chapter, but its model - moving contemporary art into museums, ruins, civic spaces, and public institutions - is likely to remain part of the conversation in Greece for years to come.

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