A history of Kippenberger’s museum on a Greek island—both a parody and a site of creative camaraderie

Not quite a “real” museum and not quite an installation piece of its own, the Museum of Modern Art Syros (MOMAS) was created in 1993 by German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953–97) as a private artists’ space that poked fun at the institutional value of museums. Kippenberger claimed the cement ruins of an abandoned building on the Greek island of Syros as the perfect site for his museum—the fact that there were no walls on which to hang any art did not matter to him, because no art was ever actually displayed. For seven years, Kippenberger assumed the role of museum director and annually invited a small group of friends to work on and exhibit their art in MOMAS. This publication provides the first comprehensive study of the project with Kippenberger’s original plans and interviews with the artists who attended MOMAS.

Text by: Thierry Davila, Daniel Baumann