I am inches away from an Andy Warhol original, Campbell’s Soup Box: Chicken Rice (1986). There are just three of us admiring it — no gallery queue forming impatiently, no security guards waving us back. It’s part of a pop art installation running until spring 2025, including Warhol prints and Roy Lichtenstein works, on board Explora I, the first ship in the freshly minted luxury line created by MSC, Europe’s largest cruise company.
Explora I only welcomed its first passengers ten months ago, yet the company will have a sister ship, Explora II, in service by September. There will be six of them by 2028. On an eight-night round trip from Athens that takes in northern Greece and Istanbul, pop art was not not what I was expecting to see.
The exhibition is emblematic of a desire by the Italian owners of MSC, the Aponte family, to do things differently: to create the feel of a luxury hotel rather than a liner..
