The meeting that took place was between the Minister of Culture in Greece, Lina Mendoni, and the U.S Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a working meeting that aims at strengthening the good relationship between these two countries in the area of culture, the Ministry of Culture announced.

The talks were focused on strengthening the Greek-American collaboration in the area of cultural diplomacy, especially before the next official visit of Minister Mendoni to America. According to the minister, culture should be the centre of this new era of close Greece-U.S. relations, and she stated that she planned to expand the current partnerships and initiate new projects in creative partnership.

Minister Mendoni is going to visit the United States with an itinerary that includes the State Department and meetings with the leaders of Greek-American communities, as well as the opening of the new Museum of Ancient Sparta and a classical theatre at the University of Connecticut. An ancient drama is planned to be performed there next year.

One of the issues of the meeting was the combat against illegal trafficking of cultural property- one of the areas in which positive results have already been attained. The U.S. officials handed back 139 antiquities to Greece in 2025 alone. Mendoni also pointed out that the Greece-U.S. Memorandum of Understanding concerning cultural property is also going to be renewed soon, expiring in November 2026. Ambassador Guilfoyle expressed full approval of all such undertakings and accepted an invitation from the minister to co-open a big exhibition of repatriated antiquities in the Ancient Agora in September of next year, the majority of which are of United States provenience.

The two officials also considered active and prospective partnerships with major American museums, such as the Getty, the Met Museum of Art, the Museum of the Bible, and the National Gallery of Art. They talked about an exhibition about ancient Greek Democracy that was going to be held to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. To commemorate the anniversary, Mendoni said the Ministry was willing to lend an important symbolic artefact to the U.S. Congress, and that the suggestion was strongly endorsed by Ambassador Guilfoyle.

The two reiterated their determination to make cultural collaboration one of the pillars of the upcoming Greece-U.S. Strategic Dialogue. Ambassador Guilfoyle observed that cultural collaboration between the two countries would be a global paradigm, which Minister Mendoni acknowledged, reflecting her personal goals of the collaboration.