Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art

While walking through New York’s East Village in the 1980s, Greek Cypriot industrialist Dakis Joannou passed by the International With Monument Gallery, saw Jeff Koons’s One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, and bought it. This, anyway, is the legendary tale of how Joannou began his collection of contemporary art, today acknowledged as one of the most important in the world and shown in museums like the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, and the New Museum, in New York. Joannou’s Deste Foundation, established in 1983, aims to be a “container” for culture, an idea suggested by the design of the foundation’s main entrance: a giant wooden crate similar to those used to transport works of art. Since 1999 the foundation has been supporting young artists through the bi-annual 10 000 euros Deste prize, whose recipients include Anastasia Douka and Eirene Efstathiou.