Donation of the John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler Library to MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection

The extremely important donation of the John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler library to MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection is sealed, after many months of negotiations, based on the mutual appreciation and recognition of the great work and the contribution of the two internationally recognised academics and the Museum in the field of study, research and their long-term collaboration. The donation includes approximately 35,000 rare publications relating to the history of Eastern European and East Slavic visual and performing arts, and mainly to the arts of the period from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, with an emphasis on the avant-garde movements that developed in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. 

The John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler Library focuses particularly on the trends and movements of Symbolism and the historical Avant-Garde to early Socialist Realism and Stalinist propaganda. It includes, among others, historical dictionaries and encyclopedias, artists’ monographs, essays by art historians and critics, engravings and lithographed editions and an exceptionally large number of rare first editions and livres d’ artistes, excerpts from critical articles and notes, exhibition catalogues, travel publications and memoirs, as well as rare recordings. The Library is the largest and most important of its kind internationally and is the result of more than fifty years of thorough research and purchase of books, magazines, catalogues and other printed material related to the history, documentation and exhibition of works of visual and material culture, architecture, applied arts (furniture, ceramics, textiles, jewellery, graphic design and scenography) and photography.

The Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni stated about the donation: “We are particularly pleased to welcome the enormous, in size and primarily in radiance and symbolism, donation of the John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler Library to MOMus. A unique collection of 35,000 publications concerning the visual and performing arts in Eastern European and East Slavic countries with an emphasis on the period of modernism.

Including a vast range of extremely rare material, the collection was assembled over decades, with great passion and personal effort, by the world-renowned professors of Russian and Eastern European art John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler. And this internationally sought-after library, for which renowned institutions have already shown interest, is arriving in Thessaloniki.

The donors rightly trust MOMus as the custodian of their lifetime work. With their move, they are coming to significantly enhance the international reputation and extroversion of the institution, which I am sure will more than justify their expectations.

Warm congratulations to MOMus, to its president Epaminondas Christophilopoulos and to the director in charge of the Museum Maria Tsantsanoglou, who contributed greatly to the granting of the collection. Our deepest gratitude is addressed to John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler for their deeply moving, but also meaningful gesture.”

The Bowlt-Misler Library

Today the Bowlt-Misler Library is housed in Southern California in the USA. The unification of all sections of the Library will take place in Thessaloniki and will form the basis of the Bowlt-Misler Library and Research Center of the MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection, which will operate from 2026 in the new premises acquired by MOMus in the Moni Lazariston complex with the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, European programmes, as well as sponsorships from Greece and abroad.

The MOMus-Museum of Modern Art currently has international recognition based on the unique Costakis Collection and Archive. With the Bowlt-Misler donation, the goal is to become a global reference point for the study of modernism and historical avant-gardes. The Bowlt-Misler Library and Research Center will operate in the same space as the Costakis Collection and Archive and will serve as a base for attracting researchers, students and artists from all over the world and organizing a scholarship program, strengthening the profile of MOMus-Museum of Modern Art as the most important institution for the study of Russian and Eastern European modernism and historical avant-gardes, while simultaneously promoting creative dialogue on the course and evolution of the arts.

The Donors

John E. Bowlt is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Slavic Languages ​​at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he also directs the Institute for Contemporary Russian Culture. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Experiment (Brill). An internationally distinguished scholar in the history of the artistic avant-garde period in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, Professor John E. Bowlt is the author of a large number of books on the history and theory of art and culture and the curator or co-curator of major and landmark exhibitions.

Nicoletta Misler is Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Art at the Università di Napoli "L' Orientale" with a specialization in the visual culture of Russian modernism. Her academic interests range from art (Kazimir Malevich, Pavel Filonov, Wassily Kandinsky) and architecture (Yakov Chernikhov, Ivan Leonidov) to contemporary philosophy (Pavel Florenskii). She has particularly studied the development of free dance in early Soviet Russia and has published a major study on the art of movement in the early 20th century.