Although it is now more than six months since the official opening of the building, positive reviews of the New Acropolis Museum keep on coming. This review is from an architectural specification magazine, hence the focus on the materials that the building is constructed from.

From:
Specifier (Australia)

Issue 189
The New Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi
Writer: Robbie Moore

In mid-2007, the Old Acropolis Museum shut its doors. Its collection of giants and centaurs, metopes, pediments and parts of the Parthenon Frieze, were wrapped in plastic shrouds and packed in reinforced wooden boxes, and hauled into the air over Athens. The artworks, some weighing two and a half tonnes, were passed between Europe’s three largest lifting cranes on their way to their new, €130 million home. Now, two years later, the New Acropolis Museum – one of the most significant and frankly political cultural projects of the last decade – has finally opened its doors.

The New Acropolis Museum is as much about the artifacts it’s missing as about the artifacts it holds. Its top-floor gallery, rotated 23 degrees to align with the Parthenon, makes a plain and eloquent case for the return of the Elgin Marbles. The gallery contains a small number of real pieces from the Parthenon, alongside replicas of artifacts taken two hundred years ago by Lord Elgin and now residing in the British Museum. The replicas were not given a fake weathered patina, but were left a perfect, toothpaste white. The contrast with the ancient stones is striking, and deliberate. This is a memorial as much as a museum, mourning a loss.

The architect of the New Acropolis Museum, Bernard Tschumi, is a supporter of the cause. His design destroys an argument used by the British since the 1970s, that Athens was too polluted with smoke and sulphur dioxide to look after the marbles. Athens’ air had already improved with the new metro system and the pedestrianisation of the historic district, but Tschumi further protects the museum’s antiquities with a sophisticated, highly controlled micro-environment. The Caryatids, for instance, were sealed behind glass in the Old Acropolis Museum, but here stand free. The interior conditions are easily preferable to those in the British Museum. The Elgin Marbles are surrounded by four walls and lit from above by diffuse daylight and spotlights, while the New Acropolis Museum’s Parthenon Gallery is open on all sides to the unblinking Greek sun. The works can be viewed, therefore, in the conditions they were intended. “Now that the building is finished and everybody will be able to see the quality of light that you get here”, Tschumi told Wallpaper*, “and the way they will be displayed here compared to the way they are displayed in the British Museum, the return [of the Elgin Marbles] will make sense straight away”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Constantine Sandis looks back at the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures following the opening of the New Acropolis Museum. The New Acropolis Museum is compared to the British Museum’s concept of the universal museum, showing that both museums exhibit universalism, but in different forms. More importantly though, he asks whether both sides have lost site of the true issue of what is best for the sculptures.

From:
The Liberal

The New Acropolis
by Constantine Sandis

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved,
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto XV, 3-6.

Last summer, the New Acropolis Museum in Athens opened its gates, not only to the public but also to a flood of arguments and emotions old and new. The root cause of this commotion lies in the fact that nearly half of the sculptures which originally graced the Parthenon have been residing in the British Museum, ever since they were purchased from the bankrupt Lord Elgin in 1816. Numerous smaller fragments, it is often forgotten, are kept by other museums across Europe.
Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Dimitrios Pantermalis is visiting Nicosia next week to give a lecture about the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Cyprus Mail

President of Acropolis Museum in Cyprus
Published on February 17, 2010

PRESIDENT of the New Acropolis Museum, archaeologist Dimitrios Pantermalis, will visit Cyprus next week and will give a lecture in Nicosia.

According to an announcement issued by the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, which is organising the lecture, Pantermanis will speak on the New Acropolis Museum, its Architecture and its Exhibition Programme.

More positive coverage of the New Acropolis Museum which opened last year.

From:
Flavorwire

The Acropolis Goes Modern
1:01 pm Monday Jan 25, 2010 by Kelsey Keith

After inevitable delays — including the discovery of an ancient Athenian city under the building site — The New Acropolis Museum is open for business, packing in visitors to the historic but semi-rundown neighborhood of Makrygianni in Athens. The thoughtful design by former Columbia architecture dean Bernard Tschumi and team positions the 226,000 square foot museum over the footprint of the long-ruined city; the exhibition space — ten times larger than that of the previous edifice — provides what could someday be a permanent home for the hotly contested Elgin Marbles and other looted artifacts. Hellenic architecture porn after the jump.

Bernard Tschumi Architects won the bid in 2001 in a design competition chaired by Santiago Calatrava; their winning plan “created a deliberately non-monumental structure whose simple and precise design invokes the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greek architecture” while establishing a dialogue between the museum’s exhibition spaces and the existing Acropolis buildings.

The New Acropolis Museum which opened last year forms a gleaming new home to potentially house all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
Los Angeles Times

A gleaming new showcase for the Acropolis
Athens finally has a place to display the hotly contested Elgin Marbles, plus statues, friezes and other artifacts from the ancient Greek site.
By Suzanne Muchnic
January 24, 2010

Reporting from Athens – For advocates of the repatriation of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century and long housed at the British Museum in London, the new Acropolis Museum is proof — at last — that Greece has a safe place to display the hotly contested artworks.

For Athenians who live and work near the Acropolis, the looming modern structure at the southeastern base of the hill is a mixed blessing. The $200-million, 226,000-square-foot museum has transformed the area of Makrygianni, boosting property values while dwarfing other buildings in the neighborhood.
Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who read the first edition of Mary Beard’s book; The Parthenon, will be pleased to hear that a revised version of it is planned, which will take into account the fact that the New Acropolis Museum discussed in the first edition has now opened & is quite liked by the author.

The Parthenon (Wonders of the World)
Author: Mary Beard
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 1861973012

From:
The Times Blogs

January 15, 2010
The “new” Parthenon, my new edition?

I wrote my little book on the Parthenon about a decade ago. It looked at the material of, and from, the temples in all its different locations — from the Acropolis itself to the diaspora of the Parthenon in London, Paris, Rome and Wurzburg and other places.

Things have changed a little since then. A small fragment of the Parthenon frieze (and I mean very small) has been sent “back” to Athens from Heidelberg (thanks, largely to a Greek then in the administration of the University of Heidelberg); another, slightly larger piece, has gone back from Palermo.
Read the rest of this entry »

Dimitrios Pantermalis has given a lecture on the New Acropolis Museum at Columbia University, to coincide with their current exhibition.

From:
Athens News Agency

Lecture on New Acropolis Museum in NY

New York (ANA-MPA/P. Panagiotou) — Dimitrios Pandermalis, President of the Board of Directors of the New Acropolis Museum and Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, presented a lecture on “the Acropolis Museum and Its Collections” on Saturday evening at Columbia University in New York, in Schermerhorn Hall at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

Pandermalis made a historic review of the landmarks in the search for the appropriate site for the New Acropolis Museum, the obstacles that arose along the way, the excavations that necessitated a change of plan, and the final result that he said enchanted humanity.
Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew George MP, Chair of the Marbles Reunited campaign in the UK has submitted two Parliamentary Questions relating to the Parthenon Marbles. The answers might be predictable, but they do help to clarify that there are no current official negotiations – something that needs to happen for the Parthenon Marbles to get any closer to returning.

From:
Hansard

House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 30 Nov 2009 (pt 0003)
30 Nov 2009 : Column 373W—continued

[...]

Elgin Marbles

Andrew George: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what recent discussions he has had with the Board of Trustees of the British Museum about the future management of its Parthenon marble exhibits. [302468]

Margaret Hodge: Neither my right hon. Friend, nor I have had any recent discussions with the Board of Trustees. However, he has met the Director of the British Museum and discussed the Museum’s capital programme. He has also been briefed by the Director
Read the rest of this entry »

Two new planes purchased by Aegean Airlines will publicise the New Acropolis Museum, with huge images of artefacts from the museum painted on their sides. This will publicise the New Acropolis Museum to help Greek Tourism – something that will also help to publicise the issue of the Parthenon Marbles.

(If you click through to the original article, there are images of the two planes.)

From:
Aegean Air

2 new Airbus aircraft, “Cleisthenes” and “Pheidias”, take the New Acropolis Museum and Greece on a journey around the world
Athens, November 26, 2009

Aegean, the largest Greek airline, announced a national cultural initiative, ultimately aiming at boosting the country’s international image, as well as supporting Greek tourism. In particular, the two new Airbus Α320 aircraft bearing the image of the Acropolis Museum’s Kori of Athens were presented during an event held at the company’s technical base. The inscription urges us to “Discover the New Acropolis Museum”, not to mention the Museum’s website at http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr. “Cleisthenes” and “Pheidias” become a live invitation to the New Acropolis Museum for millions of passengers throughout the world. They will be calling us on a tour through civilization, at each and every destination, at each and every airport.

These two airplanes however are not the only “vehicles” promoting the Museum and Greece. From the beginning of 2010 onwards, a special video that will be provided by the Museum will be broadcast aboard all 22 brand new Airbus aircraft owned by AEGEAN during all international flights. The video will introduce the newest jewel of Greece and Athens to travelers, let alone arouse their interest and encourage a visit.
Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the fact that its opening was a few months ago, press coverage of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens continues, with regular reviews – the vast majority of which are positive.

From:
AllGov

Greece Unveils Museum Meant for Stolen Sculptures
Saturday, November 21, 2009

Greece has built a new museum to reclaim the Parthenon Marbles, or Elgin Marbles, from the British Museum. The Parthenon Marbles are symbols of ancient Greek glory that were chiseled off the Parthenon temple two centuries ago by Lord Elgin. Greece has been demanding their return for decades, and in the past the main argument against their return was Greece’s lack of a suitable location for their display. The new Acropolis Museum is a proud rebuttal and call for their return.
Read the rest of this entry »

Columbia University’s Wallach Gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition of architecture & archaeology that relates to the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. Bernard Tschumi, the architect of the New Acropolis Museum was previously Dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

From:
Columbia Spectator

New museum in Athens inspires exhibit at Wallach Gallery
“The New Acropolis Museum” incorporates architectural models, casts of classical Greek pottery and sculpture, and rare books and prints in Wallach Gallery.
By Kat Balkoski
Published Tuesday 10 November 2009 07:17pm EST.

“It is my profound belief that an exhibition in an educational institution should do more than please the eye and present ‘originals,’” said Ioannis Mylonopoulos, a professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and curator of “The New Acropolis Museum,” on view at the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.

The exhibit contains little in the way of what would traditionally be considered “fine art”—instead, it incorporates architectural models, casts of classical Greek pottery and sculpture, and rare books and prints from Columbia’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. This selection of media gives the impression that the exhibit is more focused on the work that goes into the creation of art spaces and art appreciation than on art itself.
Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to this site, for some time now it has been possible to follow Elginism on its associated Twitter feed & Facebook page. In an attempt to increase the multimedia aspects of the site, you can now also join Elginism’s Flickr photostream. At present the photostream consists of archive images – some of which I’ve already made available through other sources. In the coming months though I hope to further integrate these various aspects of the site so that they tie in more closely to the main site.

A youtube channel for Elginism will also be available soon.

View Elginism’s photostream on Flickr here.

Current photosets include:

• New Acropolis Museum opening.
• The Acropolis (including many areas not normally accessible to the public).
• Protest outside the British Museum (see original post for more details).