Educational Programmes

Τhe Department of Educational Programmes of the Benaki Museum, headed by Niki Belesioti, designed three museum kits with subject the icons in the Velimezis Collection and organized special loan programmes for these, addressed to pupils in Junior and Senior High School.

Produced too, in collaboration with Stergios Stassinopoulos, Kali Malanou, Vasilis Broumas and Nikos Smyrnakis, was the ‘Ecclesiastical Painter’s Workbox’, which contains:

A working drawing, four successive stages of making a portable icon of the same subject, gold leaf, burnishing tool and small knife for applying gold leaf, small brushes, bole, mortar and pestle for pulverizing pigments, clamshells, vases with glue, varnish and plaster of Paris, little bottles of pigments, a set of 74 transparencies, and a brochure with explanatory texts and proposals on presenting the museum kit.

The ‘Workbox’ accompanied the icons of the Collection in all the exhibitions, giving their curators the opportunity to organize programmes on technical aspects of icons, addressed to groups of people with related interests and to schools in their catchment areas.

In this way, yet another respected wish of my mother, who for many years followed in the footsteps of my grandmother, schoolteacher Kalomoira Chr. Margariti, was fulfilled.