NEW YORK, NY.- The Dakis Joannou Collection will come to the New Museum in late February 2010. Artist Jeff Koons will curate the exhibition which will take over the entire Museum. This is the first time that Joannou's collection will be seen in the United States.

Dakis Joannou - a New Museum Trustee based in Athens - has worked closely with artists and curators over three decades to assemble an unparalleled collection of iconic works of art that reflect his distinctive passion and fervor. Curated exhibitions from the collection have been presented at Joannou's Deste Foundation in Athens since the late 1980's. The collection contains major holdings of works by Pawel Althamer, Maurizio Cattelan, Nathalie Djurberg, Urs Fischer, Robert Gober, Jeff Koons, Chris Ofili, Charles Ray, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker, among many others.

Koons and Joannou have had a close association and friendship for nearly three decades, and a large concentration of Koons' work from all periods is at the center of the collection. Engaging Jeff Koons as a curator reflects the kinds of ongoing conversations with artists that have inspired and animated Joannou's collection from the start. In this role, Koons' curatorial and artistic vision will bring a fresh perspective to the collection and to the works on view.

The Dakis Joannou Collection has previously been shown at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunsthalle, Vienna; and the MUMOK, Vienna.

This presentation inaugurates a new exhibition series at the New Museum, "The Imaginary Museum," which will periodically showcase leading private collections of contemporary art from around the world, providing the opportunity for rarely seen great works of art to be accessible to the public, while experimenting with adventurous curatorial formats.