Her walk. Always unwavering, confidently aiming at the great synthesis of her vision – to make art the common property of many.

Her cut. With a touch of another era, a hat, a micro-sculpture on the lapel, scarves, a connection, I think, with two great scientists who were lucky enough to have such a student: her husband Dimitris Plakas and Pantelis Prevelakis, her eternal teachers, whom she never left. The tone of another era, but a constant step into the future. He vigilantly sought and so clearly documented the public benefit he expected that the donors considered it an honor to fulfill everything he asked for the National Gallery for many, and therefore for the place.

She smiles and stands seriously: The Gallery has been transformed in her hands not in her thirty years of rule, but since the first days of her tenure: the museum has opened its doors wide for research and study by generations of younger scholars. The thrust of scientific supervision over the field, which she possessed, and her generous nature made it unthinkable to hinder research in the archives and in prison of the works of the institution over which she directed. I can only compare this to Angelos Delivorria’s contribution to the research.

He led with wisdom and courage together. This is something that I have learned deeply in over ten years, when I was next to her on the Board of Directors and the Art Committee of the National Gallery. Next to him and in between regular meetings of the Council. Together with Chrysanthos Christou, “teacher of us all” (as she called him in recognition of his great pedagogical work, although Prevelakis was her own teacher of Greek art), together with Eleni Vakalos, Stelios Lidakis and other worthy officials object. She was impressively innovative in achieving the goals she set out to achieve and scrupulously careful in the context of the implementation she envisioned. For all these years given to the perseverance of Seferiki, the self-denial of the soul, her soul, which became “one with oars and rigging, with a serious face of a nose, with a furrow of a rudder.”

The gallery was transformed in her hands not during the thirty years of her reign, but from the first days of her tenure at the helm.

I never saw her angry – she was deeply imbued with the “equanimity” of Dimitris Plakas and Pantelis Prevelakis: the ups and downs of temper were ungrateful and alien to her. He possessed the humility and wisdom of the truly great.

She was and will remain a part of the lives of many people who loved and loved her. The finality of her loss makes those who are left behind, who have tasted the privilege of her friendship, remember her and carry her in themselves. “But the journey doesn’t end.” Because the memory of the people is people. Marina Lambraki-Plaka was a blessing to her contemporaries in Greece, whether they knew her or not, as she left a rich harvest for all and we all Greeks lost her.

* Mr. Antonis Kotidis is Honorary Professor of Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.