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After reducing its operating hours for the summer season, the Benaki Museum (www.benaki.gr) in Athens has now returned to its fall-winter schedule, but with a number of considerable changes. The changes have been introduced as a belt-tightening measure to help the cultural organization deal with the effects of the ongoing economic crisis. It is worth noting that both the Benaki’s Pireos Street annex and the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery on Kriezotou Street were closed in August. According to the organization’s new schedule, the museum’s headquarters in Kolonaki’s Koumbari Street will only open on five instead of six days a week. While the museum only used to be closed to visitors on Tuesdays, the Koumbari building will now be shut on Mondays as well, although the museum shop will remain open. The museum will open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 9 a.m. until midnight on Thursdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. In the Rouf neighborhood south of the city center, the Benaki’s Pireos Street annex will be open to visitors four days a week, Thursdays to Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. At the same time, the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery, which reopened earlier this year following an extensive refurbishment, has added an extra day, Wednesday, to its schedule, while opening hours will be 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery’s shop will open for business on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., as well as Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Benaki’s curtain raiser for the fall season is a retrospective tracing the creative career of painter and engraver Valias Semertzidis (1911-83) at the Pireos Street annex. | 
