Few who have been inside the completed New Acropolis Museum would be able to argue that the sculptures could be equally well displayed in any other location outside Athens. Certainly, they may raise other arguments, such as the legalities of ownership, or how the sculptures supposedly form the basis for another institution, but the argument that they are better displayed elsewhere should now be considered irreparably null & void. Nowhere else is it possible to see the sculptures & the building that they were once an integral part of in the same glance. The pattern of light & shadows of the sculptures is replicated, as is the exact original spatial arrangement of them. Only in Athens is it possible to get a tru understanding of the scale & significance of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
New York Times

Elgin Marble Argument in a New Light
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: June 23, 2009

ATHENS — Not long before the new Acropolis Museum opened last weekend, the writer Christopher Hitchens hailed in this newspaper what he called the death of an argument.

Britain used to say that Athens had no adequate place to put the Elgin Marbles, the more than half of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and pediments that Lord Elgin spirited off when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago. Since 1816 they have been prizes of the British Museum. Meanwhile, Greeks had to make do with the leftovers, housed in a ramshackle museum built in 1874.
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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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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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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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The opening of the New Acropolis Museum is proceeding towards the main event on 20th June. Although Greece is waiting until after the opening before announcing any new initiatives for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, most press reports are still (rightly) observing that the buildings raison d’etre is the creation of a new home for the marbles.

From:
Xinhua

New Acropolis Museum to showcase complete Parthenon sculptures
2009-06-19 12:20:41
by Liang Yeqian

ATHENS, June 19 (Xinhua) — Visitors from across the world will admire the complete sculptures of the famous Parthenon Temple for the first time when the new Acropolis Museum officially opens on June 20.

Dimitros Pantermalis, director of the new museum, told Xinhua that all of the Parthenon Temple sculptures owned by Greece will be displayed on the third floor of the new museum.
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The main inauguration of the New Acropolis Museum is going to be broadcast live from the museum’s website which was launched yesterday.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/16/2009
New Acropolis Museum inauguration live on museum’s portal

The New Acropolis Museum will be inaugurated on Saturday, June 20, by President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias in an official ceremony that will be attended by heads of state and government and noted international figures, and will be broadcast on television throughout the world.

The inauguration ceremony will also be broadcast live on the internet, on the Museum’s website at www.theacropolismuseum.gr, which opened its electronic gates to the public on Monday.
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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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Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis was today briefed on the final preparations for the opening of the New Acropolis Museum which will begin from Wednesday culminating in the main opening ceremony on Saturday.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/15/2009
PM briefed on New Acropolis Museum opening

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis on Monday had a meeting with Culture Minister Antonis Samaras and the head of the organisation for construction of the New Acropolis Museum, Prof. Dimitris Pandermalis, who briefed him on the progress of preparations for the official opening of the New Acropolis Museum on Saturday.

“We have carried out all the preparations required and we briefed the prime minister and I am sure that everything will go well on Saturday,” Samaras told reporters as he emerged from the premier’s offices in Maximos Mansion.
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More coverage of Greece’s statements that rejected any potential loan deal on the Elgin Marbles if the likely preconditions from the British Museum were part of the package.

From:
The Guardian

Greek fury at Elgin marbles ‘loan deal’
Queen turns down invitation to opening of major new museum in Athens built to house Acropolis treasures
Helena Smith, Athens
The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

A bitter new row over ownership of the Elgin marbles has erupted, threatening to eclipse the inauguration this week of a major new museum in Athens designed to house the contested masterpieces.

Just days before the opening of the €130m (£110m) New Acropolis Museum, officials in Athens and London were this weekend engaging in barbed exchanges over the classical treasures.
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Much is being made in the press about the rejection of a supposed Elgin Marbles loan deal that never existed in the first place. Unfortunately, many more interesting facts about the opening are being drowned out by the noise made by this story.

From:
Agence France Presse

British Museum to attend Greek launch despite marbles spat
2 days ago

LONDON (AFP) — British Museum officials will attend the inauguration of Greece’s New Acropolis Museum next week, it said Friday but insisted its stance on the long-disputed Parthenon Marbles remains unchanged.

A spokeswoman for the museum also stressed that it had not made an offer nor received a request for those sculptures held in London to be loaned to Athens, following comments by a Greek minister this week.
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As more information becomes available on this story, it seems that my initial suspicions were right & that no loan offer was ever made.

From:
Associated Press

UK museum refutes report of Greek antiquities loan
2009-06-11 23:19:03

ATHENS, Greece (AP) – The British Museum is refuting a Greek radio report saying it offered part of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece on a three-month loan.
A museum spokeswoman says the broadcaster had based its report on a statement referring to the museum’s standard policy for loaning objects.
Hannah Boulton says the museum has «not received any loan request for the Parthenon sculptures.

Earlier Thursday, Greece’s Culture Minister Antonis Samaras had rejected such a deal, saying it would mean renouncing any Greek claim to the 2,500-year-old sculptures. Greece hopes one day to display the works beside its own surviving Parthenon sections in a new museum opening next weekend.
The works originally decorated the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis of Athens.

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