Duke University has decided to return to Greece a Byzantine manuscript of the 10th century, which was removed from Athos Monastery of Agios Dionysios, announced recently the Culture ministry. Upon her visit to Washington D.C., the Ministryʼs secretary general, Lina Mendoni, praised Duke Universityʼs decision to return the manuscript, a move that came to follow the return of a Byzantine gospel from the Getty Museum, in September. Both priceless manuscripts were stolen from the Greek monastery in the 1960s. The secretary general had visited Washington D.C. earlier last week to meet with officials from the Smithsonian Institute, the National Gallery of Art and the National Geographic and discuss the details of the Greek show to be hosted in the U.S. capital in the coming months. During her visit, she also presented the culture ministryʼs projects to members of the Greek diaspora in a round-table discussion organized by the Greek Embassy in Washington and Harvardʼs Center of Greek Studies.
Christos Kalloniatis (Professor of the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean), Iris Kritikou (Archaeologist-Historian of Art), Konstantinos Maniatopoulos (Director of the Stratis Eleftheriadis-Tériade Museum – Library, Visual Artist-Historian of Art), Irine Vasilopoulou