Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, Folklife & Ethnological Museum of Macedonia –Thrace

It is a happy occasion for our Board the celebration of completing 40 years since the launch of the Museum that explores and display the contemporary culture of our country. When the Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia-Thrace, opened its gates to the public in 1973, it was only the second state Museum that Thessaloniki had, next to the Archeological. Now housed in a historic building of the city, the villa Modiano, also known as Old Government House, the Folklife Museum of Northern Greece, which was founded by the Macedonian Educational Society in 1957, was reestablished in 1970 as a Public Entity with its new name: Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia. 

Within these forty years the research of the recent culture in Northern Greece, that the scientific staff of the Museum conducted, multiplied its collections, that include over 24,000 objects, and yielded permanent exhibitions, a large number of temporary exhibitions, summer creativity workshops, publications, educational programs, workshops, seminars, speeches and lectures. The FEMM-Th willingly shared its experience and knowledge of the organization and operation of a museum that oriented in the elevation of the contemporary culture with institutions and organizations that took over similar initiatives, exercising advisory and consultative activity. 

The increase of available spaces of the Museum especially in the sector of the notification, namely organizing and hosting exhibitions, has been for our administration a high priority and that ascribed the construction of the building of Temporary Exhibitions and its surrounding area in 2008. The activities, that are taking place in the new building and the courtyard, include, in addition to the temporary exhibitions, educational programs, art, workshops, Shadow Theater performances, narration and workshops on storytelling, opportunities to renew the contact between the Museum and people of all ages. The numbers of students who visit annually FEMM-Th exceed 13,000; 7,500 of which get involved in educational programs of the museum that museum educators present with great zeal making the students visit an unforgettable experience. 

The co-organization of exhibitions with other city agencies and beyond the city, contributed to a wider notification of the activity of FEMM-Th, with the most recent the Temporary Exhibition “Light on light: an illuminating story”, which was co-organized with the Museum of Byzantine Culture and had a happy escalation to be accommodated by Technopolis in the City of Athens and to be announced in the Acropolis Museum which supported the exhibition with educational activity. 

Another area in which our Board gave great importance was the integration of FEMM-Thin the Operational Program of Information Society in 2006 and its continuation in the Program of Digital Convergence, which the Museum recently joined. 

With the first, FEMM-Th started the digitization of its collections, whereas the latter will complete the digitization and will make accessible the exhibitions, collections, the Museum library to remote areas, extending its educational and learning activity in the digital world. 

The next steps of the museum, as to the field of communication, are directed to the completion of the cycle of permanent exhibitions that include the diet and the dwelling in traditional society, the expansion of its educational programs outside the main building and the publishing activity. 

The FEMM-Th participates in the celebrations of our city pursuing that way to contribute, by presenting artifacts from its collections, to the knowledge of the recent past, making this knowledge useful for today. Therefore, for the 2300 years of Thessaloniki the museum organized in 1985 the Temporary Exhibition “Urban Greek House of Thessaloniki, 1880-1912”. 

For the one hundred years from the liberation of the city the Museum presents the exhibition “Thessaloniki, a hospitable cosmopolis”, which refers to the transformation of the city during its transition in modern times. This transformation was radical in all areas of the city, as it happened in parallel with events of global historic importance, such as the two World Wars, localized wars that had broader geopolitical importance, natural disaster, such as the great fire of 1917, the rearrangement of the demographic composition of the city in dramatic conditions, such as the settling of refugees in 1922-1923, and also with tragic circumstances, such as the loss of the Jewish community during the years of the Nazi occupation. The great wave of urbanization in the early postwar decades multiplied the population and the area of Thessaloniki. How people stayed alive and how they enriched their lives in such circumstances, often so diverse by geographical origin, this exhibition attempts to show with objects from the collections of FEMM-Th and other objects that the Friends of the Museum willingly lent us. The answer is encoded in the title of the exhibition: Thessaloniki was a hospitable cosmopolis. Ever since its establishment.