Municipal Art Gallery (Thessaloniki)

Since 1986 it has been housed in the Villa Mordoch on Vassilissis Olgas Avenue, a mansion designed by the architect Xenophon Paionidis in the eclectic style in 1905 and owned by the Municipality of Thessaloniki.

It also uses the Makridis Room near the Posidonio sports centre on the sea front and the old Archaeological Museum (Yeni Cami) as permanent exhibition spaces.

One of its aims is to jointly organise exhibitions with major visual arts institutions in Greece and abroad.

Thus it has presented such artists as Max Ernst and Nikos Engonopoulos (in 1997), Theofilos Hatzimichail (in 1998), and, for the first time in Greece, the works of Nikolaos Gyzis owned by his family (in late 1999).

The immediate aims of the Municipal Gallery include converting the second and third floors of the Villa Bianca into permanent exhibition spaces for works by Thessalonian artists and its collection of Byzantine icons.