GREEK STATE ASSUMES CONTROL OF STAVROS NIARCHOS CULTURAL CENTER

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation handed over its Renzo Piano–designed cultural center, which houses the National Library and the National Opera House, to the Greek state in a ceremony on Thursday, February 23, Ekathimerini reports. The foundation also donated roughly $650 million to support the maintenance of the facility for years to come.

Prime Minster Alexis Tsipras welcomed the “generous donation” and also acknowledged the public’s unease over the fate of the center once it’s under state control by saying, “The concerns are very real. They are due to the fact that many Olympic facilities on which the people spent hundreds of millions remain unexploited, virtually in ruin.” He added, “However, it is not right to create the impression that the state and citizens are not in the position to keep this jewel, to make use of it and to make it into something even better.”

Tsipras brushed over several examples of missteps by both private and public Greek cultural institutions, including the Athens Concert Hall, which accumulated millions of dollars of debt, forcing the state to intervene. Director of the foundation Andreas Dracopoulos said that the center has already been “embraced” by Greeks and that 760,000 people have visited the space since it opened in 2016. President Prokopis Pavlopoulos added that if the state fails to manage the facility, it “will not be a breach against the donors but against culture itself.”