The D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift

The gift featuring 100 works jointly held between the MCA and the Guggenheim is one of the most impactful donations to our collection in the MCA’s history.

sculptural installation of large tendrils spanning from floor to ceiling fills gallery

Ernesto Neto, It Happens When The Body Is Anatomy Of Time, 2000. Lycra tulle, clove, cumin, and turmeric; Dimensions variable. Installation view, From Death to Death and Other Small Tales, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

In 2022, the D.Daskalopoulos Collection gifted a remarkable body of over 100 artworks jointly to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

The collection was founded in 1994 by the Greek entrepreneur Dimitris Daskalopoulos, whose far-reaching philanthropic activities have been shaped by his unwavering belief that the experience of art can expand the collective imagination and address issues fundamental to contemporary life.

It features works by some of the most influential figures of the postwar period, with a special emphasis on pieces created in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift represents a selection of key works from these extensive holdings. Encompassing 55 artists and artist groups working in a wide range of media, the gift addresses themes that are critical to Daskalopoulos’s founding collection, chief among them the tension between wonder and struggle that characterizes the human condition. This joint donation initiates an innovative collaboration between the MCA and the Guggenheim, facilitating a close exchange of curatorial ideas and technical knowledge between the two museums. The gifted works will be shown alongside the existing permanent collections of both museums, significantly expanding the narratives of contemporary art that can unfold for audiences in Chicago and New York. In addition to this transformative gift, the D.Daskalopoulos Collection donated 110 artworks to Tate, United Kingdom, and 140 artworks to The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST), Greece.

About the Donor

Dimitris Daskalopoulos is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, art collector, and founder of NEON, a nonprofit organization committed to bringing contemporary culture closer to everyone in Greece. He is a Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, as well as an active member of the Tate International Council, the Leadership Council of the New Museum, and a founding partner of the Whitechapel’s Future Fund.

Daskalopoulos’s philanthropic support has enabled the creation of multiple curatorial, educational, and research-based roles that have furthered both scholarship on and public access to contemporary art. He is the recipient of honors including the Leo Award, given by the Independent Curators International (ICI) in 2014 in acknowledgement of his visionary approach to collecting and his work in establishing NEON.

I started collecting contemporary art and very quickly found I was putting together a dialogue around a central theme, and that central theme was my marvel at human existence—this finite being, that despite its limited capacities in terms of the universe and time, [fights] on an individual level, on a level of a society, and is creating progress. For me, the body . . . is the locus of human existence [and] human existence is a struggle—thankfully, a creative one.

—Dimitris Daskalopoulos