HELBI

The Athens College school could not have found a better way to celebrate its 80th anniversary than with its exhibition honoring Penelope Delta as a writer and a woman of self-denial, daring and vision. Delta worked to promote her dream that every Greek boy and girl should have a proper education and access to books. It is not by chance that she, her father Emmanouil Benakis and above all her husband Stefanos Deltas were behind the success of the college. Many people visited the college on Wednesday for the opening of the exhibition, titled “Once upon a Time Lived Penelope Delta.” In the college’s theater are works created by 150 artists who responded to the college’s invitation to create a new work inspired by Delta and her heroic world. Wednesday’s host was Alexandros Samaras, chairman of the board of the Greek-American Educational Foundation (Athens College - Psychico College), a successful architect and the great-grandson of Penelope and Stefanos Deltas. Samaras showed Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis around the exhibition, which was curated by Iris Kritikou. Half the proceeds from the sale of the works will go to the college’s scholarship fund, which gives about 400 children a year the chance to study at the school, as Anastassia Papachela-Stoupathi, the fund’s president, explained. The exhibition, which continues to December 20, links the past with the present, reminding us of a great Greek woman whose books kept us all company in the past, and continue to do so today.