ATHENS – Culture and Sports Minister Lina Mendoni met with the director of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) Wu Weishan for talks on “cultivating dialogue between Chinese and Greek art, both ancient and modern”. In the meeting on Tuesday, January 14, they started by discussing plans for a temporary exhibition on the philosophers Socrates and Confucius at NAMOC in April 2020.

“Wu Weishan is a renowned sculptor on an international level, an academic and teacher…who is visiting Greece at the invitation of the minister,” a ministry announcement on Wednesday said, noting that Wu Weishan had come at the head of a delegation of artists and experts on museums so that he might be fully informed on the prospects for cooperation with Greek museums, both state and private, and cooperation in the organisation of exhibitions, the exchange of knowhow and arranging artists’ residencies.

Socrates and Confucius, “these two symbolic personalities that are the most characteristic representation of the dialogue between the two ancient civilizations with human beings at their epicenter,” will be exhibited at the National Arts Museum of China, the culture ministry noted. The inauguration of the exhibition is set to coincide with an official visit to Beijing by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. It will be the forerunner of a major exhibition being prepared by the Greek culture ministry and NAMOC in 2021, for the 200-year anniversary of the Greek Revolution in 1821 and the 100-year anniversary since the foundation of the Communist Party of China, the announcement added.