In Conversation: Irene Y. Panagopoulos, Katerina Hadji & Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki

What does it mean to collect as a way of making sense of the world? What lies behind the desire to pursue the unattainable? A morning conversation on collecting, curating, and the ideas that shape how Greece is imagined and reinvented. Founder of the eponymous collection Irene Y. Panagopoulos, Katerina Hadji, curator of the show, in conversation with Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki, Director of the Hellenic Centre, come together to explore the ideas behind the exhibition Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands. At the centre of their conversation lies the act of collecting - not simply as gathering of objects, but as a way of ordering the world and deciding which stories are kept, shown, and passed on - a desire that extends naturally to Fernweh itself: the longing for distant places that gives the exhibition its name, and the desire to understand the world through knowledge, memory, and imagination. Following breakfast at 09:30, the discussion runs from 10:00 to 10:45. Image: Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965), Lord Byron, c. 1989, oil on panel, 38.1 x 35 cm, Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection.