National Museum of Natural History Goulandris

This guide to the National Museum of Natural History Goulandris in Athens follows Niki Goulandris, who traded a career in politics and economics for a paintbrush after studying under Adorno and Horkheimer in 1950s Frankfurt. It traces how her wildflower illustrations and Constantine Goulimis's collection of pressed plants led her and her husband Angelos to open a museum inside a neoclassical Kifisia mansion in 1964, at a time when almost nobody in Greece talked about conservation. Listen for how a house filled with pinned beetles and cabinets of rock gives way, next door, to a slowly turning dome built from satellite images.