New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art includes extensive Classical Greek, Cypriot and Byzantine collections. Visitors from across America and from around the world enter the Met and the first port of call is its Classical Greece collection. Take few steps beyond and you’re in the Byzantium collection; step to the side and its Jewish; then Roman and Egyptian and so on.

The Met is a global cultural institution whose collection of Hellenic art serves as its basis for its understanding of the art of the great republic, America, and the ‘West’. But back in Australia, do any of our collecting institutions have substantial Hellenic collections? The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has a Classical Greek Vase collection, and the Australian National Gallery (ANG) in Canberra has Greeks coins. I haven’t audited these institutions for their ancient treasures and to be fair the major Greek, Roman and other antiquities of the West are nigh impossible to secure, and the lion’s share belong in European, British and North American collecting institutions.

However, it seems to me that wealthy Greek and Italian Australian citizens are less inclined to act as financiers for Greek and Roman collections as they do in other countries. There is no such ambiguity at New York’s Met where wealthy Greek patrons fund the major Hellenic collections, such as the Jaharis family who funded the Byzantine art. Where are wealthy Greek patrons’ names at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne where the country’s largest Greek population live?

Last year the Hellenic Museum announced its partnership with the Benaki Museum in Greece, the oldest privately founded museum in Greece. The Hellenic Museum was the dream of multimillionaire businessman the late Spiros Stamoulis. The Stamoulis family and son Harry Stamoulis have supported the project since 2008 in the former Royal Mint building in William Street, Melbourne.

Melbourne’s Hellenic Museum and the Benaki Museum are privately founded and both aim to promote a diversity of Hellenic art and culture. The Hellenic Museum has over the last two years developed some interesting programs. Yet, the challenge facing the Museum it will be to ensure that more than just Greek Australians view its programs, especially from the Benaki Museum. The Hellenic museum just announced the staging of Elliniko Theatro, (Greek Theatre), of New York, Socrates Now an amazing play that should be seen by the general public. So, why is it not presented at the Arts Centre? Again, one hopes it’s not just a few Greek Australians. Socrates, his death and his impact, has universal importance.

It is good to see the Stamoulis family promoting Hellenic culture. My question is why isn’t that patronage more pronounced within Australia’s mainstream cultural institutions? Has the Hellenic Museum secured sufficient non-Greek audiences and mainstream media to fill the gap of Hellenic art in mainstream institutions?

Hellenic Museum CEO John Tatoulis seems to have the museum heading in the right direction, at least the Benaki Museum partnership secured some coverage in The Age.
Yet, I believe that government arts funders still see the Hellenic Museum as largely a private concern and possibly a community museum. This may change under Mr Tatoulis.

The first time the Hellenic Museum secured funding from the Victorian government it was from its multicultural affairs coffers for a program celebrating the 60 years of Assisted Passage for Greeks to Australia. This ersatz program seems to have been quickly assembled and thrust upon the museum featuring a middle weight pop star, a fading protest singer from the 60s and a relatively benign photographic exhibition of Greeks from Greece who ‘made it’.

I hope the Hellenic Museum is not the apotheosis of a cultural ghetto, a museum for Greeks, at the edge of the CBD. Melbourne is one of the world’s largest Greek speaking cities and more action could have been taken by community leaders, patrons and politicians of Greek heritage to ensure that the Greek Diaspora’s ancient and contemporary arts central to Melbourne’s cultural life.

For example, Stelios Faitakis and his Byzantine style icons and murals influenced by street art and Diego Rivera needs to be shown here. His work is unique, contemporary and visceral. Faitakis’ is working on How far is the horizon, a mural in Holbaek, Denmark and Hell As Pavillion at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He has been presented in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Venice Biennale, in Mechelen, Belgium and the Freie Muenchner und Deutsche Kuenstlerschaft, Munich among others.

I dream of seeing Greek Australian patrons’ names, and Indian, Italian, Chinese and so on emblazoned across the marquee of the National Gallery of Victoria and other arts institutions, just like the names of Greek, Iranian and other patrons at the Met in New York City.

In Australia those with wealth in the Jewish community grasp the importance of patronage of arts institutions without limiting their support of the Jewish community organisations. In 2008 Smorgon’s lifetime support of the NGV continued with a $15million gift – the largest cash donation made to an Australian art museum by a living individual. Marc and Eva Besen, their daughter Naomi Milgrom and son-in-law John Kaldor are among the nation’s most generous arts benefactors who have provided support to the NGV, the Art Gallery of NSW and Malthouse Theatre. Jewish Australians support the Australian Jewish Museum and other institutions such as the Lamm Jewish Library of Australia.

Greek Australians have made inroads into the arts, commerce, science, academia, and politics, but the impact of Hellenic culture is not heralded in Australia’s cultural institutions.

Yet in New York City, in Boston and Chicago, the Hellenistic zeitgeists are evident in all walks of cultural life. This is why leadership by wealthy Greek Australian intellectuals, media and community leaders is crucial. We need to work towards the creation of self assured and confident, not arrogant, nor ethnocentric vision of who we are. To do this we need financial input into Australia’s cultural and arts from our community’s wealthy.

This absence of a robust cultural profile is not only the responsibility of wealthy Greek Australians many of whom are anchored to the symbolic ethnic ghetto. It is may also reflect on institutions that do not aggressively seek the support of the Greek wealthy. Or, have they tried and failed?

In some cases, these ‘artistic leaders’ lack sufficient understanding of Hellenic culture, history and community development, that’s another discussion. If aspiration is the essence of the migration ethos, particularly among Greeks where is their money in the arts?

Its not an either, or, issue. Greek Australian rich must continue to sponsor programs for the Greek Communities such the Greek Cultural Centre that will open under the auspices of the Greek Community of Melbourne, Victoria and is supported to the tune of $2m by the State Government. The Greek Community of Melbourne, Victoria may need to resolve its Centre’s positioning in relation to the Hellenic Museum. Here is an inherent conundrum, if the Cultural Centre, as we believe from recent statements, is there to promote contemporary Hellenic culture, then what is the role of the Hellenic Museum?

Greek Australians as a whole and as individuals love and support the arts, but the central issue is, which arts? Where are they in mainstream institutions? This may apply to the Italian wealthy who seem absent from great investments into Australia’s cultural life. Yet, it was the Italians who initiated the first international arts festival in Victoria, the Spolleto Arts Festival in the 1980s – later colonised by the Victorian Government of the day to become the International Arts Festival.

The Australian Jewish community – individuals and wealthy benefactors – supports the Australian Jewish Museum. This could be a model for both the Hellenic Museum and the Greek Cultural Centre of the Greek Community of Melbourne, Victoria. The Greek Australian wealthy should build relationships with Australian cultural institutions to promote Hellenic classical and contemporary culture to all Australians. A Hellenic foundation that brings in expertise from across sectors and is a conduit to money, intelligence and skill, may need to be considered.

I look forward to the opening of the Greek Cultural Centre, it may be an antidote to the, at times, kitsch representation of Hellenic culture in Australia we often see in the form of festivals, pop concerts and community art. Equally, I will support and visit the Hellenic Museum more often, even though I am uneasy about its capacity and future role.

Yet, I will religiously visit the Met in New York and the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. These two institutions reflect the universality of Hellenic culture and values. The New Acropolis Museum in Athens, designed by Bernard Tschumi and Michael Photiadis, boasts an area of 25,000 square meters, with exhibition space of over 14,000 square meters, and is built on top of an urban settlement dating from Archaic to Early Christian Athens. I just wish I could see more Greek impact on our major Australian cultural institutions.

Fotis Kapetopoulos is an arts consultant coordinating the collaborative arts marketing strategy for Melbourne’s West and runs the annual Bite the Big Apple Arts and Cultural Management Tour of New York City. He was the former editor of Neos Kosmos English Edition and was a multicultural media adviser to former Premier Ted Baillieu. For more information www.kape.com.au