The New Acropolis Museum has put the issue of the Parthenon Marbles in the international spotlight. There are now moves underway to build on this position & push forward on the wave of public opinion to implement new moves to deal with the situation. This was always the plan of the Greek Ministry of Culture – that the museum should be appreciated for what it was, without the press coverage dwelling on the Marbles issue, paving the way for the next chapter of the campaign once the dust had started to settle.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/22/2009
Karamanlis to brief President Papoulias

Prime Μinister Costas Karamanlis will pay a call on President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias shortly after noon on Monday. Karamanlis will brief the President on the outcome of the European Union summit late last week in Brussels, which mainly focused on the problem of illegal migration, and on the decisions taken.Earlier, Karamanlis will meet with visiting Vietnamese deputy prime minister and foreign minister Phan Gia Khiem. Οn Saturday, at his speech during the inauguration of the New Acropolis museum stressed “The Acropolis Museum is a reality for all Greeks; for all the people of the world. It is a modern monument, open, luminous and is harmoniously intertwined with Parthenon itself. It permits the Attica sun to shed its light on the ancient works of culture and allows the visitor to enjoy and appreciate the details of the exhibits. This modern monument narrates the history of democracy, art, rituals and everyday life. It succeeds in harmonically linking antiquity with the modern world of the technology and imagery. That’s why pioneering,” Karamanlis told the audience of dignitaries, which included lead architects Bernard Tschumi and Michael Photiadis.

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There has been a colossal amount of media coverage of the New Acropolis Museum, building gradually in the weeks leading up to its opening. Within Greece, it has become the most important news story in almost every paper, as evidenced by this summary of the headlines.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/22/2009
Athens Newspaper Headlines

The Monday edition of Athens’ dailies at a glance

The grand inauguration of the New Acropolis Museum on Saturday evening in Athens, the Greek people’s resounding demand for the Parthenon Marbles’ repatriation and speculation of early general elections dominated the headlines on Monday in Athens’ newspapers.

ADESMEFTOS TYPOS: “The demand for the Parthenon Marbles’ repatriation is international – Foreign newspapers and media support Greece’s demand”.
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Following the official opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it is now fully open to the public for the first time. At present, due to high demand all tickets have to be booked in advance, although by the end of the week there will also be some tickets going on sale every day.

From:
Associated Press

Greece’s New Acropolis Museum opens to visitors
1 day ago

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The new Acropolis Museum opened its gates Sunday to hundreds of visitors eager to explore its vast collection of sculptures and artifacts from ancient Greece.

The museum holds more than 4,000 ancient works, including some of the best surviving classical sculptures that once adorned the Acropolis.
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Museums often claim that they are popularising culture – that they are displaying artefacts from the past to people who would never otherwise have seen them. In many cases though, this creates a new split – that the original creator / owners are no longer to see their own culture. Surely understanding ones own culture should be given as much (if not more) importance as understanding that of others? Is it possible to understand other cultures without understanding your own first?

From:
Afrikanet

Datum: 23.06.09 09:32
Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku
Are major africa Art exhibitions only for the western world? Ife art exhibition begins in Spain but will not be shown in Nigeria or any other african country

A major exhibition on Ife art, Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, opened on June 16, 2009 at the Fundación Marcelino Botin, Santander, Spain and will move from there to the Museum for Africa Art, New York, United States and later to the British Museum, London, United Kingdom. The exhibition however will not be shown in Nigeria or in any other African country. (1)

The exhibition consists of some 120 excellent bronze, terra-cotta and stone sculptures from 12th – 15th century from Ife (or more correctly, Ilé-Ife), the spiritual capital of the Yoruba in South-western Nigeria and the place where, according to Yoruba mythology, creation took place; the gods, Oduduwa and Obatala descended from heaven to create the earth as directed by the Supreme Deity, Oludumare. The objects in the exhibition have been loaned by the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) which is working in collaboration with the Fundación Marcelino Botin, the Museum for African Art and the British Museum.
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Artefacts lost from Benin in 1897 continue to be a source of controversy today. They were removed from the country during a massacre to suppress a local uprising, yet now they sit in museums around the world who refuse to fuly acknowledgej the original ownership of these pieces.

From:
The Guardian, Nigeria

Friday, June 19, 2009
Peju Layiwola’s 1897.com: Refreshing spotlight on stolen Benin artifacts
By Mufu Onifade

THE university don/artist, Dr. (Mrs.) Peju Layiwola is angry. The pent up anger has built up for years. But she is now ready to pour out the venom. And the cause she is championing appears genuine. Every artistically enlightened Nigerian – nay African – should be agitated by the continued western pillage of artifacts from Africa. Peju is angry and the only medium of expression at her disposal is art. This, at least, is an undercurrent that runs through some of her recent works already earmarked for a solo effort entitled 1897.com. The show focuses on European imperialism in Africa, with particular reference to Benin at the turn of the 19th century. Apart from the books of history, Ola Rotimi captures the pitiable stories of helpless Benin in the hands of ruthless British soldiers in a tragic epic, Ovonramwen Nogbaisi. Although, many Benin indigenes did not agree with Rotimi’s version of the story, which flies on the wings of dramaturgy rather than historical accuracy, Ahmed Yerima was commissioned in 1997 to re-write a more appealing version, which he titled Oba Ovonramwen. At least, the two plays agree on the spate of tragedy and injustice unleashed on Benin.
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The British Museum regularly asserts that artefacts are best displayed there. Much of what they do though indicates that like most others, they believe that there is an importance attached to the original context of artefacts. That it is important to show artefacts within the vicinity of where they were found. It’s just that they’d prefer to keep the artefacts for themselves too.

From:
Evening Leader

Holograms to display historic artefacts at North Wales museums
Published Date: 19 June 2009

LLANGOLLEN museum, along with a number of others in North Wales, is to start using holograms to display historic artefacts.
The institutions, along with View Holographics, based in St Asaph, have been successful in securing funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation to create a project, called Bringing the Artefacts Back to the People.

The scheme will use pioneering holographic technology to display works, described as the closest reproduction possible to the real life object and more realistic than photography and computer rendering.
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On the eve of the official opening of the New Acropolis Museum, the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures held a meeting to discuss how the issue might be tackled in the coming years & how the organisation could help facilitate the return of the Elgin Marbles. Members were present from organisations in sixteen different countries, all of whose primary aim is the reunification of the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens.

From:
Agence France Presse

Return Elgin marbles for London Olympics: campaigners
3 days ago

ATHENS (AFP) — The 2012 London Olympics would represent a symbolic moment perfect for the return of the long-disputed Elgin Marbles from Britain to Greece, campaigners said Friday.

Representatives of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS) — which has members in 17 countries — visited Athens Friday ahead of the new Acropolis Museum’s inauguration on Saturday.
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Christopher Hitchens has written a 4 page piece in Vanity Fair about the Parthenon Marbles & the reasons why he believes that they belong in Greece. Unlike many recent pieces though, although it is prompted by the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it goes far deeper into the argument, looking at many aspects of it rather than purely focussing on this most recent development.

From:
Vanity Fair

Acropolis Now
The Lovely Stones
Among the first to visit Greece’s new Acropolis Museum, devoted to the Parthenon and other temples, the author reviews the origins of a gloriously “right” structure (part of a fifth-century-b.c. stimulus plan) and the continuing outrage that half its façade is still in London.
By Christopher Hitchens July 2009

The great classicist A. W. Lawrence (illegitimate younger brother of the even more famously illegitimate T.E. “of Arabia”) once remarked of the Parthenon that it is “the one building in the world which may be assessed as absolutely right.” I was considering this thought the other day as I stood on top of the temple with Maria Ioannidou, the dedicated director of the Acropolis Restoration Service, and watched the workshop that lay below and around me. Everywhere there were craftsmen and -women, toiling to get the Parthenon and its sister temples ready for viewing by the public this summer. There was the occasional whine of a drill and groan of a crane, but otherwise this was the quietest construction site I have ever seen—or, rather, heard. Putting the rightest, or most right, building to rights means that the workers must use marble from a quarry in the same mountain as the original one, that they must employ old-fashioned chisels to carve, along with traditional brushes and twigs, and that they must study and replicate the ancient Lego-like marble joints with which the master builders of antiquity made it all fit miraculously together.
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Further coverage of the grand opening of the New Acropolis Museum. Predictably the British Museum is taking a defensive approach, choosing to try & negate any benefit of the new museum rather than congratulating Greece on this achievement.

From:
ABC News (Australia)

Greece unveils new home for marbles
Posted Sat Jun 20, 2009 1:34pm AEST
Updated Sun Jun 21, 2009 10:23am AEST

A new museum has opened in Athens, with a special gallery in it for the Elgin Marbles.

The marbles are Greek sculptures that were part of the Parthenon, but have been held in London’s British Museum for nearly 200 years.
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The grand inauguration event for the New Acropolis Museum has finally taken place, so now the general public will be allowed admission to the building to see it in its completed state for the first time.

From:
Associated Press

New Acropolis Museum opens with lavish party
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Gods, heroes and long-dead mortals stepped off their plinths into the evening sky of Athens on Saturday during the lavish launch of the new Acropolis Museum, a decades-old dream that Greece hopes will also help reclaim a cherished part of its heritage from Britain.

The digital animated display on the museum walls ended years of delays and wrangling over the ultramodern building, set among apartment blocks and elegant neoclassical houses at the foot of the Acropolis hill.
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The Big Question this morning covered the topic of the Elgin Marbles for the last 16 minutes of the program. You can watch it online at the BBCs website. In the front row guests were representatives from both the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles & from Marbles Reunited. Of the panel, Germaine Greer presented a particularly good knowledge of the issue when it was discussed & appeared to be strongly supportive.

From:
BBC

The Big Questions
Series 2
Episode 22

Nicky Campbell presents the show live from Jack Hunt School in Peterborough. Taking part in the topical debates are writer and feminist Professor Germaine Greer, journalist Fareena Alam and the novelist and religious commentator, Anne Atkins.

This week’s big questions are:

Should there be an amnesty for illegal immigrants?
Can date rape be a woman’s fault?
Should the Elgin Marbles be returned?

Despite many invites being sent to the British Museum & key figures in the British Establishment, it appears that there wil be few official representatives from the UK present at the official opening of the New Acropolis Museum. One would think that if they had such a strong position as they claim, then they would be more than happy to attend such an event rather than shying away from it.

From:
Financial Times

UK absent from Greece’s Acropolis celebration
By Kerin Hope in Athens
Published: June 20 2009 03:00 | Last updated: June 20 2009 03:00

It will be Greece’s smartest party of the summer – a moonlit dinner for 300 international guests on the terrace of the new Acropolis museum.

The list for tonight’s bash includes as many political and cultural luminaries as Antonis Samaras, the culture minister, could muster as Greece raises the stakes in its long-running campaign for the return of the Elgin marbles by the UK.
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