The emblematic pan-cycladic exhibition “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades”, organized by the Museum of Cycladic Art and the Ministry of Culture (Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades) and being on display until May 4 in Athens, will travel to Santorini to inaugurate the renovated Archaeological Museum of Thera on June 13, 2025. The exhibition that is co-organized by the Municipality of Thera will officially open its doors to the public on June 14 and will remain on view until October 31, 2025.

The exhibition is the first joint action of the Museum of Cycladic Art and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, in implementation of the Memorandum of Cooperation signed on May 17, 2024 by the Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, and the President and CEO of the Museum of Cycladic Art, Sandra Marinopoulou, with the aim of studying, highlighting and promoting the Cycladic culture in Greece and abroad.

The exhibition “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades”, presents history through the eyes of the women of the Cyclades, from antiquity to the 19th century. It brings together 180 unique masterpieces from almost all the islands of the Cyclades: Amorgos, Andros, Delos, Thera, Ios, Kea, Kythnos, Melos, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros, Seriphos, Sikinos, Siphnos, Syros, Tenos and Pholegandros. The exhibits date from early prehistory to the birth of the Greek state. Unique works, most of which have never travelled either outside the Cyclades or outside the Museum of Cycladic Art; some have never before been presented to the public. Alongside the marble Cycladic figurines of the Early Cycladic period from the Museum of Cycladic Art, 135 exhibits from the collections of the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades and artefacts from the Canellopoulos Museum, the Epigraphic Museum of Athens, the Ephorate of Paleoanthropology and Speleology and important private collections are on display.

The exhibition aims to examine the roles of women and their positions in insular societies, through smaller or larger “untold” stories that are told by the women themselves, either through their words or through their material remains, though almost always through the eyes of the men of their time. The exhibition thus brings to light unknown roles of women over time and how these roles were influenced by their insularity. Deities and mothers, priestesses, courtesans, merchants, fighters, intellectuals, mourners, witches, immigrants all take – all star in the show. The visitor will come to know the Cycladic women both in the public and private spheres, in social, political, religious, and family life.

Statuettes and large-sized sculptures, vases, jewellery, coins, funerary stelae, inscriptions with legal texts, frescoes, mosaics, engravings, manuscripts and icons – ranging from prehistoric to post-Byzantine times – compose the exhibition. From these exhibits, many of which could stand as individual objects of exhibition on their own, three works stand out due to their uniqueness and size: the colossal Kore of Thira (2.48 meters in height), one of the few nearly complete archaic statues; the emblematic fresco from Akrotiri on Santorini depicting the “Women in the Sanctuary,” a unique and monumental work (nearly 4 meters in length); and the Hellenistic statue of the Stag-hunting Artemis from Delos, which is being exhibited outside the island for the first time.

The curators of the exhibition are Dr Demetrios Athanasoulis, Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, and the Academic Directors of the Museum of Cycladic Art, Dr Panagiotis P. Iossif, Professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Dr Ioannis Fappas, Assistant Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

“Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women of the Cyclades”

Archaeological Museum of Thera

June 14, 2025 – October 31, 2025