In December the Onassis Foundation will open Six Rings, a two-floor cultural-retail destination on Patission Boulevard in Athens, within sight of the Parthenon and well off the route most visitors take.
Tim Etchells has made the facade artwork for the opening, an early signal that the programming will be commissioned rather than leased.
Few competitors can claim the Onassis Foundation’s combination of cultural reach and financial stability. That is the real inventory here, more than any label on the rail.
If Six Rings works, it hands museums and foundations that hold both real estate and credibility a template for using them. If it does not, it will be read as the moment the cultural-retail formula met a market too thin to carry it.
