For Dimitrios Pantermalis who has overseen the New Acropolis Museum project, his goal has been simple – to have the best museum in the world. Whether or not it will truly be the best is a hard question to judge, but there can be littel disputing that it will be the best museum in which to display the sculptures from the Parthenon & Acropolis monuments.
From:
Guardian
‘Our goal is to have the best museum in the world’
Ancient Athens lies at the root of western culture, yet the battles over the marbles that once adorned the Parthenon have been far from civilised. Could the city’s new Acropolis Museum offer a fresh beginning? Stephen Moss gets an exclusive preview
Stephen Moss
The Guardian, Tuesday 16 June 2009
“Forgive me, it is crazy,” says Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, explaining why he has kept me waiting for almost half an hour in the museum’s spacious reception. Pandermalis is the elderly, dignified archaeologist at the centre of the latest – and the Greek government hopes concluding – chapter in the saga of the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles, and the pressure is beginning to tell. “I hate all this publicity,” he says. “This is not my job, but I have to manage it.”
Beware Greeks bearing gifts. An adage I should have borne in mind before accepting an invitation to be the first journalist to be allowed to see the museum’s completed galleries, and the first person to photograph the inside of the airy glass box at the top of the museum which will house the part of the Parthenon Marbles held by the Greeks. This is a rare privilege, but it also means being drawn into the seemingly endless controversy that has raged since Lord Byron savaged the seventh earl of Elgin for removing large chunks of the statuary from the Parthenon in the first decade of the 19th century – a cache that ended up in the British Museum a decade later and has been a source of resentment in Greece ever since. The Greeks may hope their splendid new museum – which has been almost 40 years in the planning (twice as long as it took for their ancient forebears to build the Parthenon) and cost €130m – will bring the issue to a head, but the portents are not good.
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