Recent events in Syria & Iraq have helped focus people’s minds on the issue though, although the looting of Iraq over ten years ago ought to have been enough for Parliament to see the benefits of ratifying the convention.
Lords put pressure on UK government to sign Hague Convention this year
by Anny Shaw
21 January 2016
Members of the House of Lords and leading cultural heritage experts are again calling on the government to ratify the Hague Convention seven months after it agreed to sign the international agreement. If parliament swiftly ratifies the treaty’s two protocols before any of the other five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the UK will also be in a position to set up a headquarters in London for the Blue Shield, the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross.
During a debate in the House of Lords on 14 January, Baroness Andrews said there was a “growing sense of urgency” to sign the convention following “grotesque failures in Iraq” and “the increasing barbarity in Syria”. She added: “The events of the past six months have, I believe, changed the game.” Read the rest of this entry »
Greek Politics is always intriguing to an outsider. I am whether there is any substance to this decision to strike legal action off the list of possible options for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, or whether there is a sensible basis behind it.
No doubt, in due course, more will be revealed, but I feel that it is a great shame to write off methods of retrieving the sculptures, that have yet to be fully explored, while planning to repeat other methods that have been tried before and failed.
We are now 3 culture ministers removed from the one who originally commissioned the report – yet still no closer to developing a coherent strategy for dealing with the issue.
David Hill, Amal Clooney & Geoffrey Robertson in Athens
Greece is no longer mulling court action to win back the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum in London, Culture Minister Aristides Baltas said Tuesday, adding that the government would kick-start a diplomatic campaign to repatriate the 5th century BC statues.
Questioned by MPs during a session of Parliament’s education committee, Baltas said that the government was unwilling to put forward a legal claim “most importantly because we risk losing the case.” Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote a few months ago about George Zach AKA Greek Geordie. He’s a comedian based in the UK, but originally from Greece, whose routine includes a great section about the Parthenon Marbles.
He is performing in London on 15th and 16th November at the Museum of Comedy.
Visit their website to order tickets & find out more details.
George Zach – Greek Tragedy
Comedy – 15 Nov, 16 Nov at Museum of Comedy
George is a Greek comedian living in the UK. Has appeared in all of the biggest clubs in the UK, as well as on BBC1’s This Week (twice) and The One Show.
In the UK his mates say he’s too Greek, but he’s not Greek enough for his parents abroad; he’s trying to fit in in a world he believes to be more stupid than him. Also, he is dodging his national service. Read the rest of this entry »
Despite assertions made in many new sources in May, it was generally left unreported, that the legal team from Doughty Street Chambers (Geoffrey Robertson and Amal Clooney) along with Norman Palmer had in fact not delivered their final report to Greece.
This document has now been completed and delivered to Greece. Hopefully it will be given full consideration by the government, possibly leading to a new policy announcement later in the year. I look forward to hearing more in due course about the detail of what has been proposed and any recommendations made.
Legal opinion on status of Parthenon Marbles delivered to Greece
04.08.15 | Amal Clooney, Geoffrey Robertson QC
Yesterday, The Greek Ministry of Culture confirmed that it received the legal opinion of Geoffrey Robertson QC, Norman Palmer QC and Amal Clooney regarding the Parthenon Sculptures in the possession of the British Museum.
It should be noted that between 13-15 May various news outlets including the Daily Mail the New York Times, the Telegraph, the Washington Post, the BBC, and the Daily Beast published stories falsely asserting that Mrs Clooney and her colleagues had delivered a 150-page joint legal report earlier that week advising the Greek Government to take legal action and that this advice was expressly rejected by the Greek government. Certain articles even purported to quote the legal advice from the alleged 150-page report. Read the rest of this entry »
People who are visiting the Acropolis in Athens in an accademic capacity, will now be able to access a Wifi network up there.
It remains to be seen how good the coverage is, and in these days of 3G and reduced intra-EU roaming charges, its less vital than it once was, but still a welcome development nonetheless.
Acropolis Visitors Get Wi-Fi Access
By Anastassios Adamopoulos –
Aug 6, 2015
The ancient Athenian site just got an important contemporary update to its environment.
Professors, researchers and students of educational institutions around the world will now have access to the internet upon their visits to the Acropolis. The new option is available thanks to a global roaming access service for members of educational institutions called Eduroam. Read the rest of this entry »
For many years now, various excuses have been given for not ratifying the treaty, despite pressure from archaeologists, NGOs and many within Parliament.
The current status, although not correctly reported in many news sources, is that the UK signed the convention in 1954, but has yet to ratify it. This groups us with Ireland, Andora and the Phillipines, ass all other countries that signed were also happy to ratify it.
The current impetus to finally ratify this document is no doubt related to the press coverage of the actions of ISIS in Syria and Northen Iraq. One wonders though why the looting following the deposing of Saddam Hussein in the second Gulf War (or many other similar cases prior to that) was not enough to convince the UK of the importance of the document.
Claims are sometimes thrown about, that the reason for not ratifying was that it would help facilitate the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, although I have never been entirely certain that this was the case. I am assuming that the government (which is opposed to the return of the Marbles) will have looked into the legalities of this particular aspect in detail already.
Britain signs convention on protecting treasures in war zones
Toby Helm
Sunday 21 June 2015 00.05 BST
It’s come years late, but the culture secretary is to pledge the UK to helping save historic and artistic artefacts under threat in conflict-torn countries
Britain is to end years of indecision by ratifying an international agreement aimed at preventing the loss of cultural and historic artefacts in conflict zones, amid growing outrage at the destruction by Isis militants of ancient sites in Iraq and Syria. Read the rest of this entry »
The Acropolis Museum will be six years old later this month. To mark the event, there is going to be a temporary exhibition of artefacts from Samothrace.
Greece’s Acropolis Museum Celebrates Sixth Anniversary with Samothrace Antiquities
by Ioanna Zikakou
Jun 13, 2015
The Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, will celebrate its sixth anniversary on June 20 with the inauguration of its temporary exhibition “Samothrace. The mysteries of the great gods.”
The exhibition, a cooperation of the Acropolis Museum and the Antiquity Ephorates of the Rodopi and Evros prefectures, as well as Samothrace antiquities expert Dimitris Matsas, will open for the public on June 20 and will run until September 30.
262 artifacts from the Samothrace Archaeological Museum will travel to Athens, some of which will leave the island for the first time.
British Museum criticised for loaning artefacts to Abu Dhabi organisation accused of abusing rights of workers
Chris Green
Tuesday 02 June 2015
The British Museum has come under fire over plans to loan hundreds of culturally significant artefacts, including some of its much-prized “highlights”, to an organisation in Abu Dhabi which has been accused of abusing the rights of workers.
Curators at the museum have drawn up a list of around 500 objects, a selection of which could be loaned to the Zayed National Museum in the United Arab Emirates for up to five years. Read the rest of this entry »
In the past, Greece has on numerous occasions proposed the idea of long term loans as a solution to the dispute over the Parthenon Marbles – allowing the British Museum to neatly side-step any restrictions placed on it by the British Museum Act, as well as setting aside the issue of ownership. The British Museum has always rejected such requests for a wide variety of different reasons – questioning whether a long term loan is even a valid concept (if it is long term, then it is not really a loan) despite partaking in similar agreements elsewhere. The question has been raised over whether Greece would be trusted to return them, as well as putting forward the argument that they are unable to lend the most iconic pieces from their collection, while at the same time denying the existence of any sort of list of items that can never be lent.
The recent loan of one of the Parthenon Sculptures to Russia just highlights how contradictory some of these objections are.
Now, it seems that the British Museum has agreed to an unprecedentedly large loan to the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi. The loan will include many iconic items from the Museum’s collection, including Assyrian reliefs. Some that were purchased with public money through the Art Fund, which aims to make artefacts accessible to the UK public. The loans will last for five years – far longer than the normal duration for inter-museum borrowing.
The Museum will be receiving a substantial fee for the loans.
So – if loans can be long term, if loans can be made of large numbers of items and if loans can be made of iconic artefacts, then why is it not possible for the Parthenon Sculptures to return on the same basis? Clearly, as with corporate funding from BP, money hass a role to play – although I imagine that even if Greece offered financial remuneration, their requests would still be rejected.
Artists impression of the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi
British Museum to send star objects to the Gulf
Assyrian reliefs among the 500 loans earmarked for long stay in Abu Dhabi
by Martin Bailey
2 June 2015
The British Museum’s plan to lend 500 objects to Abu Dhabi for five years has expanded to include highlights of the London institution’s collection—and we can now reveal the list of objects that the museum has earmarked to send.
The loans are to the Zayed National Museum, which is due to open in 2016. The British Museum will get a substantial fee, although it has declined to reveal the amount. Read the rest of this entry »
Greek Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis has announced that the country is considering raising the admission fees for Archaeological sites.
In many ways, it is a shame that more of the archaeological sites and museums in Greece aren’t given more autonomy to set their own charges. As far as I am aware, the Acropolis Museum is the only state run institution with any real control over its own budget. As this worked fairly well (the museum has never closed due to strikes), I would have thought that other locations in the country ought to have also transferred to a similar model.
A new ticketing system sounds great (in theory), although Greece has never had the massive waits in queues that every site in Rome seems to. The focus here seems to be more ass using it as an excuse to increase charges than anything else.
Greece: Athens mulling hikes to ticket prices at museums
18 May, 16:11
Greece’s Culture Ministry has appointed a team of experts that are amining a change in the price structure of tickets to enter Greek museums and archaeological sites, Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis revealed on Monday as Kathimerini online reports. In a response to a question in Parliament, Xydakis said the panel would be examining schemes implemented in other countries and would not be proposing an across-the-board increase in ticket prices.
Xydakis added that the government will also introduce tickets giving access to multiple sites and museums. He said that a new ticketing system would be introduced at the Acropolis from June and would then be extended to the next 59 most popular sites and museums. The minister also indicated that the ministry would like to make greater commercial use of Greece’s heritage via the Internet, including offering more merchandise
Disclaimer – I am not Greek, so everything I am writing below might be a load of rubbish. Similarly, I know that in Britain, there are many enlightened individuals, who understand the issues surrounding the Parthenon Marbles and want to see them returned to Athens.
One thing that I noticed while conducting this survey, much of which was done over Twitter, was that many of those who are against the return of the sculptures did not really understand what the issue meant to the Greeks. Not only were there those who dismissed the issue as unimportant and not worth worrying about, but others who merely responded that they were quite happy with the current situation and saw no need to change it. Still more spoke out against return of the sculptures, but when asked further questions realised that they did not actually know many of the details of the case.
All too often, the British press love to portray restitution requests by Greece as nationalistic tub-thumping – something that amounts to its critics as little more than petulant whining having changed their mind over a past decision. Hopefully those reading this website have a more enlightened view, but it does not take long reading the comments below many press articles, to find this flawed understanding is all too common.
A big part of the problem is that we only see the situation through our own eyes – we feel that as we are happy with it, that anyone who wants to change it is disruptive. We do not even attempt to look at the story through the eyes of a Greek – how they feel every time we think about it. The fact that many see the case as too insignificant to have opinions about compounds the issue – the Parthenon Sculptures really do not mean that much to the average person in Britain, whereas from a Greek perspective, the emotion attached to the case is very different.
George Zacharopoulos is a Greek comedian based in the North East of England. Some of his shows contain a sketch on the Parthenon Marbles – which while good for its amusement value alone, does offer a good way of starting to understand how their story is perceived by many in Greece. Looking at the situation in a different way helps to understand just how galling it feels to Greeks to hear mealy mouthed commentators trying to argue that rather than complaining, Greece should be thanking Britain for looking after the sculptures for them.
In the meantime, you can see a clip off him talking about the Parthenon Marbles here (Start watching 6:20 into the clip). He tells me that he has since further developed that part of the act, so it is longer than what you can see here.
Watch the video, and remember to see him while he’s in London if you are able to.
Text of the original press statement by Greek Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis, clarifying the earlier comments about potentially taking legal action over the Parthenon Marbles.
As I already said, it is a great shame that more has not been made of this clarification, or that a more detailed statement was not made sooner. Many newspapers in the UK have already been spinning the original story as the campaigning for the Parthenon Marbles being over – that Britain was acknowledging Britain’s legitimate ownership of the sculptures. This was never the case – not in the original statement and definitely not in this one. This is not an issue that will go away, much as certain elements within Britain might wish that to be the case.
I have given the text as an automatically translated version, with the original Greek below.
05/14/2015 A journalist’s question about the Greek government’s strategy regarding the claim of the Parthenon Marbles, the if. Minister of Culture Mr. Nikos Xydakis made the following statement:
The legal advice is extremely useful and reinforce the arguments of Greece for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, but the Greek government has never stated its commitment in the near future to follow the court proceedings.
