Public engagement with the Foundation for the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle (IMMA) has surged, with visitor numbers rising by 27% between 2023 and 2025 and 2024–2025 emerging as the strongest year of growth. International attendance recorded a particularly sharp increase of 36.3%, alongside a 20.7% rise in domestic visitors, highlighting the museum’s expanding appeal well beyond Thessaloniki and Greece.
The museum's content combines permanent collections on the Macedonian Struggle and modern Macedonian history with a wide-ranging programme of temporary exhibitions, educational initiatives and outreach projects. Among the most prominent projects the museum carried out in 2025 is the travelling photography exhibition "Giannis and Miltos Manakia: The Faces Behind the Lens", which has toured cities across Greece and reached audiences abroad, including in Pristina, and has presented rare archival material to the broader public. The exhibition "Sites of Memory, Places of Martyrdom", based on Nikos Kosmidis' long-term field research, has offered visitors a concise yet powerful visual narrative of Europe's traumatic wartime history, from Auschwitz and Treblinka to Berlin, highlighting how societies transform trauma into collective memory and artistic expression.
Education at the core of the museum's mission
Alongside exhibitions, IMMA places strong emphasis on education, hosting structured programmes for schools, universities and adult learners. During the 2024-2025 academic year alone, more than 8,000 pupils from 200 schools took part in educational visits, while university students participated in workshops, guided tours and specialist seminars. Free access programmes have also been extended to learners from special schools, second-chance schools and vocational institutions.
The museum's director, Athina Pavlidou, stated: "We want to bring in an audience that loves us, but we also want an audience that is new, both in terms of age and new, that has never been to the Museum before." According to its leadership, IMMA's strategy is built around sustainability, openness, growth and audience participation, with accessibility and inclusion forming central pillars. Initiatives supporting people with sensory disabilities, digital transformation projects, links with tourism and lifelong learning programmes all contribute to this mission.
Plans for 2026
Looking ahead, IMMA's programme for the coming months and into 2026 places strong emphasis on extroversion, inclusion and creative experimentation. Upcoming exhibitions include collaborative visual art shows inspired by the museum's permanent collection, as well as thematic exhibitions, developed in partnership with cultural and literary organisations. New photography and archival exhibitions on Thessaloniki's social and cultural life in the 19th and 20th centuries are scheduled to be presented both locally and internationally, including in Pristina and Belgrade.
At the same time, the museum is expanding its educational activities with initiatives such as reading and creative writing workshops for children, a new theme titled "Young Journalists in Action" aimed at media literacy and tackling misinformation, and pilot comics workshops that introduce young people to modern Macedonian history through visual storytelling.
Source: AMNA
