Journey of the Icons

Τhe ‘Journey of the Icons’ all over Greece and abroad began early with the collaboration of the Benaki Museum.

The Collection has travelled to major museums and foundations worldwide, either on invitation or in exchange for other exhibitions, or in the framework of international events or even on the occasion of state visits made by various presidents of the Hellenic Republic. The project is always under the auspices of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Presidency of the Hellenic Republic, the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

To date, there have been twenty-two exhibitions of the Collection and dozens of presentations of the CD-ROM, as well as four participations with representative works in other exhibitions of the same or related subject. Information ‘material’ accompanying the ‘Journey of the Icons’ has been published in twelve languages. In parallel, conservation work has been carried out on the icons, in preparation for scheduled exhibitions, and the publications that have run out have been reprinted.

Furthermore, there is an ongoing effort to enrich the Collection with new acquisitions through purchases or donations. Result of these endeavours is the creation of a new corpus of works that have been added to the Velimezis Collection, namely anthivola and working drawings of iconographers from the eighteenth century to the present day.