Philanthropy, art and the museum.

This paper discusses the Zygomala Museum, a small institution created in 1936 by Loukia Zygomala in Avlona, a village in Attica (mainland Greece). The creation of the museum was the result of twenty years of artistic and philanthropic work by Loukia who, in the spirit of the ‘return to the roots’ movement which dominated Greek intellectual and artistic life at the beginning of the twentieth century, aimed to contribute to the ‘pure Greek style’. She created workshops where peasant women would develop the art of embroidery based on traditional Greek designs under her instruction and supervision. At the end of this endeavour, Loukia created a museum to house the embroideries she had collected over the years, but also to commemorate her family and herself, and to provide artistic inspiration for the generations to follow. The complex set of ideas that led her to shape a museum in this way are explored in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]