World Media on Greece - Acropolis and the Parthenon Marbles in 2008

Another marble fragment from a frieze decorating the Parthenon temple was returned to Greece, this time from Sweden.

The fragment, measuring 7-by-30 cm, was removed during World War Two by an Austrian soldier. An inscription on the fragment says it was taken from the Acropolis in Athens on February 16, 1943.

Martha Dahlgren inherited the piece from her grandfather and decided to return it to Greece.

"The request for the return of the Parthenon Marbles has exceeded the borders of our country. It has become the request and the vision of the global cultural community" Greek Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said.  Read more…

Peter Aspden, an FT columnist, who in his own words, has spent "years listening to the arguments trudge back and forth", and by virtue of his attibutes "as an interested observer and of Anglo-Greek parentage" proposes a five-point Manifesto, in an  effort to help break the deadlock of negociations for the Parthenon Marbels.

Aspen describes the New Acropolis Museum as "a provocation, an enticement, a tease", a building finally giving Greeks the "physical authority" support their argument for the return of the Parthenon  Marbles. Asden takes a brief tour of the recent history of the marbles issue from Melina Mercouri's appeals in the 80's to the Greek government's focus in the past decade on the need to unify the various various pieces that comprise the Marbles in one place.

In his five-point Manifesto, Aspden stresses that the New Museum, like the succesfull 2004 Olympic Games, sympolises modern Greece's jouney to self-confident maturity, and therefore "it is worthy of celebration" with a "proactive, public offer of a three-year loand from the British Musum, so that these magnificent pieces of storytelling, and those stories can be told, for once, in one place".

Aspden proposes that after that period, "the reunited pediments should come to London for the opening of the Olympic Games of 2012 and remain there for four years". By that time "there will be so much goodwill flowing from one country to the other that there will be regular meetings between the two institutions to discuss constructive strategies of co-operation." Read more...

Veteran journalist Edward Enfield after visiting the New Acropolis Museum in Athens praised it and called for the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum to be returned to Greece.

Enfield was optimistic the Parthenon Marbles, which he described as part of Greece's greatest artistic legacy, could be returned soon, even though the British Museum Act 1963 prevents the museum from giving them up.

Edward Enfield is an English television, radio and newspaper journalist and presenter and father of the comedian Harry Enfield. Read more…

The Vatican's Museo Gregoriano Etrusco returned to Greece an ancient marble head of a youth as a one-year loan.  The fragment is part of a 160-meter frieze, depicting a religious procession, which circled the outer walls of the Parthenon.

Giandomenico Spinola, the head of the Vatican museum's classical antiquities department, said the loan of the sculpture "might" be renewed.

"This gesture sets an example for others," Greek Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said, meaning the various museums owning pieces of the Parthenon Marbles, especially the British Museum, whose spokesperson said that the museum’s position on the Parthenon Marbles was unchanged by the return of the youth's head.

The Museo Gregoriano Etrusco  is the largest museum so far to comply with the Greek request. Read more…

Athens finally has a suitable home for the Parthenon sculptures and - British marbles or not - you should go, says Ginny McGrath:

"Architect Bernard Tschumi designed the museum to allow the sculptures to be seen in natural light, but high-spec glass and climate-control ensures they are not damaged by sunlight. The piece de la resistance is the top floor, where visitors will be able to see the frieze, then turn their back to look at the Parthenon." Read more...

The New Acropolis Museum, a super-modern, glass-walled building set at the foot of the ancient Acropolis, is ready to hold the Marbles, says Eleni Gage reporting for CNN.com.

On the first level, visitors can see the excavated sixth-century B.C. ruins below; on the second level there is an Archaic gallery.

The third level, built to the same dimensions as the Parthenon, holds the Athenian-held sections of the frieze, displayed with reproductions for the absent portions, held by the British Museum since the mid 1800s.

The New Museum "has to convince the world that the Elgin Marbles should come back, and I believe it will." Tschumi says. Read more…

Travel writer Paul Mansfield describes visiting the Athens' New Acropolis Museum “like entering a hall of light, with sun beaming through plate glass windows and filtering through transparent floors and ceilings. The building seems to float, and you float with it.”

According to Mansfield the New Acropolis Museum is destined to become a signature building for Athens, and its completion, along with the success of the 2004 Olympic Games, dispels any doubts about Greece’s capability to look after the marbles. Read more...

Opinion polls show that, over the years, British people feel more relaxed about returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

Writer Christopher Hitchens, who earlier this year re-published his polemic, “The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification” shares this view and insists the Greeks have "a natural right" to the sculptures, and that they belong on the hill of the Acropolis - "in that light, in that air. Pentelic marble does not occur in the UK." Read more...

A small piece of sculpture from the Parthenon kept in a museum in Palermo, Sicily, for the past 200 years returned to Greece.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who is on an official visit to Greece, returned the 14-by-13-inch artifact, which is a foot from a sculpture of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and originally stood above the entrance to the Parthenon as part of a 520-foot frieze that ran round the temple.

"As you know, Greece is seeking the return of the Parthenon Marbles (from the British Museum), so you are aware of the importance and the symbolism of this gesture" said Greek President Papoulias. Read more…

See also:

Italy returns marble to Greece - video (BBC, 25.09.08)
Greece welcomes home Parthenon marble from Italy (Reuters, 24.09.08)
Italy returns Elgin Marbles fragment to Greece (The Daily Telegraph, 24.09.08)
Italy returns long lost Parthenon fragment to Greece (AFP, 23.09.08)

Henry Sands says Athens’s new museum is missing its Marbles:

"When the museum opens later this year, and the rest of the world sees the facilities the Athenians have built, there will be significant pressure on the British Museum to return the Marbles.

Now that we can no longer assert that the Greeks don’t know how to look after them, it will be hard to dismiss the thought that the Parthenon Marbles have a far greater impact when viewed at the base of the Acropolis than in the less resonant surroundings of the British Museum". Read more...

Marcus Binney, Architecture Correspondent for the Times, reports that the new rooftop gallery built to display the Parthenon marbles is one of the most beautiful exhibition spaces in modern architecture. Sunlight fills the gallery through floor-to-ceiling glass, and the windows have such slender supports you might be standing in the open air enjoying blue skies and the crystal light which is the wonder of Attica.

Besides the Parthenon friezes, the new museum will also display the superb sculpture from the outside of the temple with the statues of gods, horses and chariots from the end pediments and other famous sculptures, such as the female caryatids from the Erechtheion and friezes from the Temple of Athena Nike. Read more...

Τhe British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures has been called into question by a challenge to the validity of a crucial 19th-century legal document. A specialist in Ottoman law, says that without the signature and seal of the Sultan as supreme head of the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin had no legal right to remove the ancient sculptures from the Acropolis.

Professor Vassilis Dimitriadis, of the University of Crete, says that the document of 1801 — an Italian translation of an Ottoman firman or licence which the British Museum acquired two years ago as the only legal evidence of ownership — is invalidated by vital missing elements. Read more...

Bernard Tschumi answers questions regarding his creation, the Acropolis Museum & on the return of the marbles. On the question that is on everyone’s lips, his position on the return of the Parthenon marbles, Tschumi replies:

"You would rightly assume that I do support their return. In fact I am absolutely convinced that the marbles will come back. Of course they will.

Now that the building is finished and everybody will be able to see the quality of light that you get here, and the way they will be displayed here compared to the way they are displayed in the British Museum, their return will make sense straight away". Read the entire interview here.

The Guardian's Kevin Rushby gets a sneak preview of the £100 million museum in Athens that aims to reunite the Parthenon marbles:

'The visitor, for the first time, can stroll around the entire narrative of the Parthenon marble frieze at eye-level, examining the detail. And there is plenty of detail. The British Museum misguidedly restored Elgin's marbles in the 1930s, scouring away the natural weathered patina and fragments of original paint to reach a white finish, a finish that is unnatural to the stone itself. The Greek marbles retain that patina.

The new museum is undoubtedly going to be a huge tourist attraction. Its breathtaking design, with natural light flooding every corner, is a huge achievement in itself. And with every visitor, I am sure, another voice will be raised to call on London to restore the unity of this astonishing piece of art." Read the entire article here.

View the video with a guided tour of the museum here.

Thomas Dowson is the new full-time Campaign Director of the organisation Marbles Reunited. Thomas Dowson, trained as an archaeologist in South Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, has curated a number of museum exhibitions and has held several research and teaching posts at universities in England and South Africa.

Of his new appointment, Thomas said, “I am delighted to be taking up this post. I believe that there is no valid legal, political, moral or academic case that can be made against the return of the Parthenon marbles to Athens”. Read more…

The matter of the stolen Parthenon Marbles should be dealt with by the courts in a similar manner to Nazi booty, says Tom Minogue in his article in News.Scotsman.com.  

Various bodies have diplomatically campaigned for years to have the Parthenon Marbles reunited with the Parthenon, so does the multi-millionaire founder of EasyJet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who launches a personal campaign for the reuniting of the marbles. According to the reporter though, those attempts are meant to fail, because one shouldn’t negotiate with burglars. Read more…

According to journalist Mark Hodson, the Acropolis will finally have a museum fit for Greece’s greatest treasure. After an exclusive tour of the museum with curator professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, Hodson finds that with the New Acropolis Museum, the Greek authorities have created a world-class attraction:

"Wrapped around the central core of the gallery at eye level is the 160-metre-long frieze, with the Greek originals – coated in a soft brown patina – standing alongside white-plaster copies of the sections removed by Elgin. The effect is awe-inspiring. For the first time, visitors can see for themselves the travesty of splitting the marbles [...]

Whatever the arguments, when you stand in that gallery, looking at the missing sections and gazing across to the Parthenon, it is hard not to feel an emotional tug. It may have been 30 years in the making, but this museum has been worth the wait." Read the entire article here.

Karen Essex, the author of the bestselling Leonardo’s Swans traverses the centuries into the hearts of two extraordinary women to reveal the passions, ambitions, and controversies surrounding the Elgin Marbles.

In her new novel, "Stealing Athena", Essex re-creates the quest for the marbles, and tells their story through the women's eyes - from the point of view of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin, the young Scottish noblewoman who was Lord Elgin's wife (and financier), and the philosopher Aspasia, who was present at their creation.

The Elgin Marbles have been displayed in the British Museum for nearly two hundred years, and for just as long they have been the center of a raging controversy. With a new museum set to open at the Acropolis this summer, the Greek and British governments still struggle for final custody of the art. "I do think the British had a pretty good case for keeping them for a while," Essex said, "but the Greeks have built this new Acropolis Museum, with a beautiful gallery that faces the Parthenon. It seems to call for the return of the Marbles." Read more...

Book Review at Randomhouse.com

Book Review at Tampabay.com: 'Stealing Athena': What a statue and two women shared

Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said Athens' long standing demand for the Elgin Marbles was gaining momentum as museums around the world have in recent years started returning ancient artifacts to their countries of origin and avoiding to buy objects that were illegally excavated or smuggled abroad. Read more...Read more...

Lawyers, museum professionals, archaeologists, academics and cultural property experts met in Athens, Greece, 17-18 March for an international conference on the Return of Cultural Property to its Country of Origin, organised by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture in cooperation with UNESCO.

Greece says momentum growing for Marbles' return (Reuters, 17.03.2008)
UNESCO Conference on the return of cultural property in Athens (Afrik.com, 13.03.2008)
UNESCO's page about the conference

Cambridge University has debated the contentious issue of returning the Parthenon Sculptures, otherwise known as the Elgin Marbles, to Greece. The statues were removed in the early 1800s by Britain's ambassador to Athens, Lord Elgin.

Chairing the debate at Cambridge was the president of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, David Hill. He says the Association won the debate 114 to 46. "That sort of outcome's pretty consistent with all of the evidence of public opinion in Britain about the return of the Parthenon Sculptures." Read more...

In this article published in Time Magazine, Richard Lacayo exlpores the notion of cultural property and "universal museums", presenting opinions and arguments from all sides. One of the Museum professionals he talks to is Dimitrios Pandermalis:

"Dimitrios Pandermalis knows all about the idea of the universal museum. He doesn't think much of it. "A translation of the imperialism of the 19th century to the globalization of the 20th century" is what he calls the concept, and his view counts.

Pandermalis is president of the organization behind the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, conceived as a standing rebuke to the British Museum's continued possession of the most passionately disputed cultural property of them all, the 5th century B.C. Elgin Marbles. Those are carvings taken from the Parthenon in the early 19th century at the direction of Lord Elgin, who was then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Together the Elgins constitute roughly half of the surviving figures from the Parthenon." Read more...

The new ultra-modern Acropolis museum in Athens will open in September, the Greek culture minister announced on Wednesday. “In one month, we are to finish moving all the pieces from the old museum,” the minister, Michalis Liapis, said during a visit to the site.

Read world media reports on this story

Greece Hopes New Museum Will Help Win Back Elgin Marbles (AP/USA Today, 05.03.2008)
Acropolis Museum to open in September (New York Times, 22.02.2008)
New Acropolis museum set for September opening (AFP, 22.02.2008

New Acropolis Museum Website - New Material:
Video about the Construction and the Transport of the Exhibits
Childrens’s Book: ”The Museum and the Excavation: Now for young and old“

How did they do it? Some 25 centuries ago, how did the Greeks build the Parthenon with such beauty, permanence and speed?  The answer may be found at the television production “Secrets of the Parthenon”. “Secrets,” a co-production of NOVA with France’s Arte Broadcasting, follows the archeologists, architects, stone masons and workers of the Acropolis Restoration Project as they try to unravel what is described in the film as a “threedimensional jigsaw puzzle.” The producer, Glassman, is of Greek descent. "Secrets" airs 8 p.m. Tuesday 29/01 on PBS. Read more about "Secrets of the Parthenon":

Parthenon endures a probing by 'Nova' (The Daily Herald, 29.01.2008)
TV Review: Nova - "Secrets of the Parthenon" (Blogcritics Magazine, 28.01.2008)
A Treasure Made With Math and Marble (NY Times, 29.01.2008)
Unlocking Mysteries of the Parthenon  (Smithsonian Magazine, February 2008)
Penn professor featured by NOVAPenn professor featured by NOVA (The Daily Pennsylvanian, 24.01.2008)

Highlights

Politics, Business and Current Affairs

Travel

Food and Wine

Culture and Education

Science and Environment

Lifestyle

Sports and Sporting Events

Acropolis and the Parthenon Marbles

Special Reports on Greece