THE FOUNDATION ALEXANDER S. ONASSIS

and ARTICLE of THE N.Y. TIMES

www.Apodimos.com

We have the obligation to inform the people worldwide and to remember to the all Greeks and Greek emigrants around world about «Foundation Alexander S. Onassis» because Aristotle Onassis was one of big Greek emigrants who work

hard and help all the greek emigrants and help the Greek economy and offer so mush donation for health, culture, art and studies of Greeks and emigrants brothers any were in world. For that reason the Apodimos.com through the varied matter of Online Magazine (that read and study our lot of Greeks and Emigrant brothers) has presented this article «Foundation Alexander S. Onassis and an article of the New York Times etc» in Greek, the Greek emigrants the bellow:

      The Founder of the Foundation

The Founder Aristotle Onassis, son of Socrates and Penelope, was born in Smyrna in 1906. In 1922 he arrived in Greece as a refugee, and shortly thereafter emigrated to Argentina. In 1932 he bought his first ship, which he named Calliroe after his sister. In 1946 he married the daughter of the shipowner Stavros Livanos, Athina (known as Tina) with whom he had two children: Alexander, who was born in Athens in 1948, and Christina, born in Athens in 1950. About ten years later, Onassis and Tina Livanos divorced. Onassis, thanks to his genius for business, very rapidly rose to be one of the world’s biggest shipping magnates, owning mainly oil tankers. He became a legendary figure, not only in worldwide financial circles but also in the eyes of ordinary people.

In 1956 he acquired from the Greek State the concession to operate an air transport company and founded. Olympic Airways. The Company started to operate on the 6th April 1957, with a standard of service for the passengers, which would be inconceivable nowadays, for cost reasons. Olympic Airways was soon fl ying to destinations all over the world, and won a name for itself as one of the safest airline companies. At the end of 1974, Onassis rescinded the contract with the Greek State and on the 4th August 1975, after his death, Olympic Airways was transferred to it. In 1963, Aristotle Onassis bought Scorpios, a small, barren, waterless island in the Ionian Sea, which he transformed into a small earthly paradise by planting thousands of trees and building small guesthouses. It was his custom to spend a few days of his vacation there, in the company of the famous people who were his friends - one result of which was that Greece became ever more widely known. In 1968 he married Jacqueline Bouvier, widow of the assassinated US president J. F. Kennedy. On January 24th 1973, his son Alexander, then just 25 years old, was killed in an aircrash. His son’s sudden and untimely death dealt Onassis a shattering blow, from which he never recovered. He died two years later, on the 15th March 1975, in Paris. In accordance with his wishes he was buried by in the chapel of the Virgin Mary on Scorpios, beside his son and his sister Artemis. His daughter Christina was likewise buried there, when she died in Argentina on the 19th November 1988.

      The creation of the Foundation of Alexander S. Onassis

Aristotle Onassis, wishing to honour the memory of his son through the establishment of a public benefit foundation, directs in his handwritten will that his fortune should be equally divided between the foundation to be established, which was to bear the name of Alexander S. Onassis, and his daughter Christina on the explicit condition that the two portions would remain independent of each other. Thus, 45% of his fortune went to the Foundation, being the portion that he would have bequeathed to his son Alexander, and the remaining 55% went to his daughter Christina. After Onassis’s death the executors of his will, among whom were several of his close colleagues, proceeded to take all the measures necessary to establish the newly-constituted Foundation as a legal entity, named the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.

In implementation of the testator’s wishes, the Foundation was established in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, in compliance with whose laws two foundations were established: the Business Foundation, which was to serve purely business purposes, and the Public Benefit Foundation, which was to be for public benefit purposes only. The reason was to keep the business activities of the one separate from the work of the other. The Business Foundation engages in shipping and other business, and its sole beneficiary is the Public Benefit Foundation. In accordance with Onassis’s will, the latter spends about 40% of the net annual profits of the Business Foundation, and the remainder is re-invested.

      An article of the New York Times about the exhibition «Athens – Sparta»

The below article was wrote in 29. 12. 2006 in the New York Times about the exhibition «Athens – Sparta»

Their Rivalry Was Bitter, Yet Beauty Still Emerged

Joe Coscia Jr./Onassis Cultural Center The "Persian Wars" section of the "Athens-Sparta" exhibition

By GRACE GLUECK

Published: December 29, 2006

There wasn't much love lost between Athens and Sparta, the two most important city-states of ancient Greece. At the height of its influence, Athens was the glittering cultural capital of the classical age, celebrated for its art, its theater, its writers and philosophers, its architecture, its love of luxury, its democracy.

Sparta, on the other hand, was devoted to military matters, and its put-upon male citizens were forced to be soldiers most of their lives. The Laconians, the people of Sparta's region, didn't lack artistic talent or appreciation. But the austerity of their world view relegated creativity to activities associated with the gods and the cult of ancestors. Their way of life was, well, spartan.

At the Onassis Cultural Center, however, the show «Athens – Sparta» throws a new light on Laconian achievements in the arts by bringing together artifacts from both city-states. The exhibition suggests that Sparta was not as artistically backward as tradition would have it; that although Athens far outshone Sparta in its proliferation of great buildings, monuments and sculptures, the Laconians fashioned fine works in metal, pottery and ivory, at least during the Archaic Period (650-480 B.C.), when Greece was in its heyday.

Painted vases, pottery, sculptured steles, tiny carved figures, writings inscribed on stone and a selection of coins are among the nearly 300 objects on view. They are on loan from several museums in Greece; the Vatican; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the American Numismatic Society in New York. The show was organized by Nikos Kaltsas, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

The first section of «Athens – Sparta» begins with objects from both cities during the Geometric Period (1050-700 B.C.), which took its name from the geometric motifs that decorate its pottery. The show's other two sections deal with the on-again, off-again relationship between the cities in the fifth century B.C., Greece's glory years, and with the wars they fought: the Persian Wars (about 500-449 B.C.) and the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 B.C.), in which Sparta defeated Athens, only to fade itself not long after.

On many fronts, the Geometric was a highly productive era. A script for the Greek alphabet, based on that of the Phoenicians, was established; the poets Hesiod and Homer fashioned a pantheon from myths about many of the Greek gods; and the Olympic Games are traditionally dated from 776 B.C. Important works of architecture and sculpture were not yet in evidence, but vases with geometric motifs and small figures of bronze and clay, mostly votive offerings in sanctuaries, were fairly plentiful.

A handsome cylindrical amphora (a tall, two-handled jar with a long, narrow neck) from a Laconian workshop in the second half of the eighth century B.C. is one of the attractions. Its decoration of concentric circles on the neck and shoulders, with painted parallel bands around the body, bears the motifs characteristic of the period.

By contrast, Attic, or Athenian, clay work is somewhat more complex, at least as seen in a small burial urn from 740-735 B.C. ascribed to the Hirschfeld Painter, one of the first painters of vases used as grave markers. The vase was probably an urn for ashes; it is decorated with many bands of geometric motifs, except for a narrative section devoted to the deceased, who lies on a high bed watched by female mourners, and another beneath it, showing helmeted, spear-bearing warriors who presumably guarded the corpse. In this period cremation was common in Athens; no evidence of it has been found in Sparta.

More interesting are the small Laconian figurines of pottery, clay and bone. Among them a tiny bronze figure of a male flute player or cupbearer is surprisingly alive, despite his skinny, rubbery body, arms and legs. Seated on a stool, his hands carrying an object (possibly a flute or cup) to his unformed mouth, he is no more than an emblem of a seated man, but there are echoes of his cursive shape in 20th-century sculpture.

By the first half of the sixth century B.C., Sparta was in fact one of the most important bronze-working centers, producing lively small pieces that included male and female figures in daily pursuits, as well as resplendent warriors, animals, demons and mythical creatures. Many of these small works are shown here, among them a very modern-looking figurine of a barefoot girl runner (550-540 B.C.) with firm, muscular calves, revealed by a very short skirt; and an athletic-looking later statuette (early fifth century B.C.), thought to be the figure of a male trumpeter. (The trumpet, or possibly javelin, is missing.)

By the Archaic Period, as society evolved from tribal to civil and felt the first stirrings of democracy, art had changed radically. Rigid geometrical motifs were succeeded by more human forms, like the kouroi and korai, the stone or bronze statues, sometimes life-size, representing young men and women, and symbolizing a new emphasis on the individual. Usually they bore relief images of the deceased and were set on graves as markers and memorials.

On view from the sixth century B.C. are two small Attic representations of kourai, dressed statues of maidens, said to represent the Athenian aristocracy in rites celebrating the goddess Athena. Carved in stone, with long, braided hair (one is headless, but her braids are visible) and beautifully articulated drapery that clings to their bodies, they disappeared as a type after the Persian wars.

Laconian stone sculpture in general does not measure up to Attic work in the medium, but a powerful exception - one of the stars of the show - dates from the time of the Persian wars, in which Athens and Sparta played crucial roles in defending Greece against the Persian empire. What is thought to be a statue of Leonidas (only the upper part remains), the hero-king of Sparta, was probably made by a skilled Laconian sculptor in 480-470 B.C. Full of life and energy, it shows the king in a running position, wearing a high-crested helmet as he leads his small army in defense of the pass at Thermopylae, where he was overwhelmed by Persian forces but chose to die fighting rather than flee.

Another fine Laconian stone piece is a fifth-century grave stele of a young man, from about 475-450 B.C., as he sits in mourning, apparently on his own tomb. One hand supports his bent head, the other holds a fruit symbolic of the underworld: a touching image of sorrow over the shortness of his life.

At vase painting, it's evident that Athens is the winner hands down, as shown by the beautiful examples here of black and red figure styles, pictorial narratives painted in black on a red ground, or vice versa. No subject was left untouched in the vase paintings, but prime themes were chariot racing, dance, ceremonies, battles and scenes from mythology. One standout here is a large red-figure pelike (430-420 B.C.), a big-bellied cinerary urn with two handles, the work of a painter known as Polion. The main face shows a warrior departing from his aged father, as his mother stands sorrowfully by.

      The Cultural Activities of the Foundation of Alexander S. Onassis

The second of the Foundation’s aims is served by organising exhibitions and educational events based on Classical, Byzantine and contemporary Greek culture. The Onassis Cultural Center has organised exhibitions of archaeology, contemporary art and sculpture, lectures, concerts and dramatic readings, for the citizens of New York.

In the case of the exhibitions of art and archaeology, the affiliated Foundation collaborates with the Greek Ministry of Culture, the major Greek museums, and important cultural bodies and museums in Europe and the U.S.

The exhibitions, which are supervised by scholars of international repute, are always accompanied by catalogues, leaflets and posters, which are offered to all visitors and are also sent to selected academic and educational organisations in the USA and Europe.

Furthermore, the exhibitions are accompanied by educational events such as lectures and one-day seminars. Guided tours are provided for American and Greek-American schools, universities, senior employees of museums and educational or cultural foundations in the US, diplomatic and consular representatives, and of course for the general public. Entry to the exhibitions and educational events is free.

Following are some of the 14 exhibitions of art and archaeology organised by the affiliated Foundation of New York:

ü        Classical Memories in Modern Greek Art  October 2000 – March 2001

ü        Microsculpture: Idols from the Stone Age to the Helix of Contemporary Genetics November 2001 – February 2002

ü        Silent Witnesses: Early Cycladic Art from the 3rd millennium B.C.  April – June 2002

ü        Post-Byzantium: the Greek Renaissance November 2002 – February 2003

ü        The New Acropolis Museum in Athens March – June 2003

ü        From Ishtar to Aphrodite. 3200 Years of Cypriot Hellenism October 2003 – January 2004

ü        Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of childhood from the Classical Past January – April 2004

ü        Alexander the Great: treasures from an Epic Era of Hellenism December 2004 – May 2005

ü        From Byzantium to Modern Greece: Hellenic Art in Adversity, 1453 – 1830 December 2005 – May 2006

   

Apart from the exhibitions, the Onassis Cultural Center in New York also holds cultural events which sometimes travel to other American cities, such as Washington, Boston or San Francisco.

 In the spring of 2006, for example, a highly successful performance of Aeschylus’ «The Persians» was put on by the Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington and received rave reviews.

Entry to these exhibitions and shows is always free to the public. To date 56 musical performances, events dedicated to the ancient Greek theatre and ancient Greek writers and poets, and a celebration of contemporary poetry and literature, as well as lectures and conferences have been held.

These exhibitions and cultural events have received extensive coverage from the American and international media.

The affiliated Foundation lends distinctive financial support to any artistic or cultural initiative, on the part of American individuals or establishments, in which the Greek culture is represented.

Since the end of October 2003, the attempt to promote the Greek cultural heritage has been supported by the opening, in the atrium of the Olympic Tower, of the Hellenic Museums Shop, which, in collaboration with many museums in Greece, sells objects inspired by articles on display in the latter. Artefacts and jewellery in precious metals, inspired by Greek art and tradition, important publications, Greek traditional music and exhibition catalogues are all on offer.

The shop selects the objects for sale to correspond with the exhibitions currently being held in the Cultural Center, in order to achieve the best possible promotion of Greek culture.

We think that all Greeks, Cyprians and Greek emigrants around world reading the above information’s, witches the Apodimos.com offer to them will be prudes about «Foundation Alexander S. Onassis» and all of them they will remember the Aristotle Onassis.

Source info from Foundation Alexander S. Onassis