Miltos Manetas is a Greek painter and theorist. Photography © Miltos Manetas
1.In your opinion, what is the role of a museum?
When it comes to Western-Style painting- the kind of painting that started with Giotto- the existence of Museums with a strong collection of paintings from the Masters is essential. In places where such Museums do not exist, its difficult, even impossible to produce important paintings of that kind, because this particular form of art is always generated by the information that the old paintings contain. To say it in computer terms, the Painting of the Western World is Database and Network generated.
When it comes instead to the rest, the Global Painting- such as the pictures of the indios of the Amazonas, the religious byzantine paintings, the ancient Greek paintings on vases, the paintings of the indigenous people in Australia etc, the Myseum is a useless – even a fatal environment: those works need their cultural context to exist, in our Museums they are abused.
2.What are your favorite museums in the world? Why?
I like each and every min the world (most of them are in Europe and US) where paintings of Old Masters are collected. My absolute favourite museums is -of course- Prado, Louvre and the Metropolitan.
