Washington Membership Event

Leadership 100 members from the Washington, DC metropolitan area gathered on January 14, 2014 with prospective Leadership 100 members and guests for a private tour of the National Gallery of Art exhibit "Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections." The event was organized by Mike Manatos, a member of the Leadership 100 Board of Trustees.

Following the private tour, Leadership100 members hosted a reception on Capitol Hill where the mission of Leadership 100 was explained to the prospective members. The hosts included Ted and Lea Pedas, Jim and Wanda Pedas, Chairman Emeritus Stephen and Thelma Yeonas, Constantine J. Kalaris, Mike and Laura Manatos, Andy and Tina Manatos, Leon and Robyn Andris, as well as the former Greek Minister of Culture and Tourism, Pavlos Yeroulanos, who arranged for the exhibit to come to the United States, and who is the great grandson of Antonis Benakis. Yeroulanos announced that he would be joining Leadership 100 and looked forward to attending the 23rd Annual Conference, celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the organization, to take place February 13-16, 2014 in Naples.

Special guests at the tour and the reception included Greek-American Members of Congress John Sarbanes and Dina Titus; ; former US Ambassador to Hungary, Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, a member of Leadership 100, and former US Ambassador to the Netherlands, Cynthia Schneider; Benaki Museum board member Constanza SbokouConstantakopoulos; Brookings Institute Managing Director Bill Antholis; Leadership 100 Chairman Emeritus Constantine G. Caras and his wife, Dr. Maria Caras, from Greenville, Delaware, and Patsy Kouvas, a member of the Leadership 100 Board of Trustees, from Warren, Ohio; senior diplomats from the Greek and Cypriot Embassies and clergy from Greek Orthodox churches in the area.

This exhibit was the first the National Gallery of Art has devoted to Byzantine Art, and the first Byzantine Art exhibit in the US drawn exclusively from Greek collections. The 170 rare and important works, as the National Gallery notes, "offer a fascinating glimpse of the soul and splendor of the mysterious Byzantine Empire...and trace the development of Byzantine visual culture from the fourth to the 15th century, beginning with the ancient pagan world of the late Roman Empire and continuing to the opulent and deeply spiritual world of the new Christian Byzantine Empire." The sculptures, icons, mosaics, frescoes, manuscripts, metalwork, jewelry, glass, embroideries, and ceramics were loaned by the Benaki Museum, and the National Museums of Athens and Thessaloniki.