The reality of the dispute over the Parthenon Marbles is that it has progressively become more politically oriented as time has elapsed since they were first removed from Greece. This is not to say though that there aren’t also good archaeological reasons supporting their return.

From:
The Guardian

Arts and humanities | Comment
Moving the marbles
The case for the Parthenon frieze is more about about politics than archaeology or public access, writes Mike Pitts
Saturday November 22, 2003

Whatever side you take on the case for moving the fragmentary 5th century BC Parthenon frieze from London to Athens, recent events show that the arguments are more about politics than archaeology or public access.

In 2001, MP Edward O’Hara proposed that the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Athens for the Olympic games next year, to fill the otherwise empty museum being built by Greece at a reported cost of £29m (in case anyone missed the hint, the Greek culture minister, Evangelos Venizelos, presented the UK with a virtual tour of the marbles in the new museum). The prime minister, Tony Blair, told Greece the art belonged to the British Museum, a view recently echoed, in refreshingly diplomatic language, by the museum’s present director, Neil MacGregor.

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In recent months, Dorothy King has been highlighted as the person who is going to spearhead the British Museum’s fight to keep the Elgin Marbles in the UK. It remains to be seen whether she will have significant effect on the inevitable paradigm shift within the museums community.

From:
The Observer

Arts and humanities
The woman who is rewriting history… from the year Dot
David Smith, arts and media correspondent
Sunday November 16, 2003
The Observer

Cooking has Nigella Lawson, gardening has Charlie Dimmock and poetry has Daisy Goodwin. Now archaeology is the next subject to receive a glamorous TV makeover, thanks to an outspoken 30-year-old blonde dubbed ‘the female Indiana Jones’.

But whereas viewers are happy to watch a domestic goddess at work in the kitchen, Dr Dorothy King is already provoking a backlash in a profession still regarded as one of the last bastions of male dominance. Her undiplomatic views on the controversy surrounding the Elgin Marbles have seen her dismissed in archaeological circles as ‘not a serious academic’ and ridiculed as ‘a rich amateur with a flag to wave’.

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