A new website aims to show the Parthenon frieze in its entirety online, so that people can see the parts from separate museums joined virtually into a single image.

From:
Cordis

Technology project enables public to view Parthenon frieze online
[Date: 2003-06-24]

An information technology project funded by the Greek government has enabled archaeologists and the wider public to take an online tour of the complete Parthenon frieze, whose blocks themselves are held in three separate museums in Greece, the UK and France.

The Greek Ministry of Culture, together with the national documentation centre and first ephorate of prehistoric and classical antiquities, decided to digitalise the frieze on account of its cultural importance, and exploited new technologies in order to maximise the projects appeal and impact.
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Bernard Tschumi, the designer of the New Acropolis Museum speaks about some of the key points of the design of this building.

Form:
Greece Now

Museum with a view
New Acropolis Museum architect Bernard Tschumi speaks to Greece Now about his Parthenon ‘glass house’

Swiss theorist, teacher and architect Bernard Tschumi believes in building spaces that make events happen. As the winner of the New Acropolis Museum contract, this philosophy of his will be put to the ultimate test. And though the Parthenon marbles’ return to Greece from the British Museum amidst 2004 Olympic fanfare is not guaranteed, there is an entire floor in Tschumi’s contract-winning plan for the disputed 160-metre frieze.

The winning design (created with Greek architect Mihalis Fotiades) was among 12 projects invited to compete by the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum. After three fruitless competitions (two Greek, one international) held for the museum since 1976, construction is finally set to begin by the end of the summer.
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A possible resolution to the dispute over the Elgin Marbles has been proposed, whereby Greece would operate the New Acropolis Museum as an annexe of the British Museum, allowing the London institution to retain ownership & control of the sculptures, while they would be on public display in Greece.

From:
Greece Now

Joint venture could solve Marbles deadlock
Greece offers annex of new Acropolis Museum to the British Museum to host exhibition

Greece has offered to host a joint-exhibition of the Parthenon Marbles (known in the UK as the Elgin Marbles) with the British Museum in a bid to end the tug of war over the sculptures in time for the Athens 2004 Olympics.

The Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos offered an annex of the planned Acropolis museum, being built in time for the Games, to revive stalled talks over the ancient Greek sculptures.
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It was originally planned that the restoration works on the Acropolis would be completed in time for the Olympics – the huge amount of work still to be completed means that this is now unlikely to happen.

From:
NZoom

Acropolis may miss Olympics
Tuesday, Jun 17, 2003

Greek archaeologists are working overtime to finish the restoration of the Athens Acropolis before the 2004 Olympics, but warn that not all the scaffolding may have been dismantled by August next year, when the Games kick off.

“We are undertaking an immense effort to make the Acropolis as beautiful as possible for the Olympics, but I can’t guarantee that will happen — the deadlines are very tight,” Maria Ioannidou, restoration director for the renowned ancient temple complex overlooking downtown Athens, told AFP.
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The New Acropolis Museum represents a momentous turning point in the story of the Elgin Marbles – and perhaps the most persuasive argument for their return, to emerge in recent years.

From:
Financial Times

Friday Jun 13 2003
Sharp end of civilisation
By Peter Aspden

They arrived in London in 1811, cracked and battered, but, like an asylum seeker with suspect credentials, they had to wait for another five years before they found a new home, in a brick-built shed in Bloomsbury.

Within months, they became one of the city’s most compelling attractions. One admirer, the painter Benjamin Haydon, wrote with amazement that 1,200 people had visited them in a single day. He liked to record conversations in his diary: “We overheard two common-looking decent men say to each other, ‘How broken they are, a’ant they?’ ‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘but how like life’.”
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The British Museum is 250 years old. In the time since it opened, a lot has changed – the means of acquiring artefacts, which were once acceptable, are no longer seen in the same light.

Perhaps now, in celebration of this anniversary, the time is right for the British Museum to re-invent itself, but repatriating the disputed artefacts in its collection, by negotiating new deals & exchanges, by looking forward rather than backward.

From:
Guardian

National treasure
In praise of the British Museum
Leader
Saturday June 7, 2003
The Guardian

This nation has too few monuments to the mind. Quite the grandest can be found in the capital – the British Museum, which is 250 years old today. A project of the 18th-century English enlightenment, it offered an education to the masses at a time when the country’s monarch, and much of its ruling classes, were indifferent to the public’s need for scholarly nourishment. It took an act of parliament to set up, was paid for by a public lottery and was founded in Bloomsbury in 1753 where it still stands. The first national public museum in the world opened for “all studious and curious persons” two years later. Dickens, Marx and Orwell all passed through its neo-classical portals in the pursuit of knowledge.

The British Museum made its name by collecting and cataloguing the world. It has sensibly abjured the trend for many public places to be an arm of the entertainment industry. This can be deeply unfashionable, but there is a place for it – highlighted by the need to repair Iraq’s cultural heritage, a task which the British Museum’s curators and conservators are uniquely equipped to help. Of course one person’s accumulated wealth can be viewed as another’s loss. Plunder may have brought the Elgin Marbles to Britain, but it is undeniable that they remain free for anyone to see. These arguments should be put to one side today. The British Museum’s repository of knowledge instead should be celebrated.
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