The Financial Times has published various letters in response to their earlier article on what is required for the Parthenon Marbles to be returned.

From:
Financial Times

The real barrier to a compromise over Marbles
Published: December 6 2008 02:00 | Last updated: December 6 2008 02:00

From Prof John Kapranos Huntley.

Sir, It is refreshing to read a balanced commentary on the future of the Parthenon Marbles by someone who so clearly understands the conflicting feelings and aspirations that surround it (Peter Aspden, “A manifesto for the Marbles”, Life & Arts , November 29/30). A putative voice for reason and conciliation has been raised. What might drown it out is the underlying conflict over a matter the FT and its readership would hopefully go a long way to defend: property rights.

The Parthenon Marbles are not simply artefacts; they are fixtures attached to buildings on the Parthenon for more than 2,300 years until they were forcibly removed. They are not independent pieces of statuary or pottery to be crated around the “cultural” museums of the world.

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More feedback from the talk given at the Royal Institute of British Architects on the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Building Design

Bernard Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum
12 December 2008
By Stephen Phillips

Bernard Tschumi presented his New Acropolis Museum at the RIBA last week, and took Greece’s bid to win back the Elgin Marbles to the next level.

In the early eighties, I covered the Elgin Marbles story for Channel 4 News. Actress Melina Mercouri was Greece’s culture minister, and we filmed her touring the British Museum to inspect “her” treasures, under the guidance of its then director, David Wilson. He played a courteous, stiff upper-lipped straight bat, while she deployed all the emotive powers of a tragic actress. It made good television. There was no meeting of minds. Nonetheless, her eighties offensive made an impact, persuading at least one party leader, Neil Kinnock, to declare for their return.

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Although the article title says that it is the Parthenon, it should say Propylaea - which still represents a hugej step forward in the overall Acropolis restoration programme.

From:
Athens News Agency

04/12/2008
Parthenon restoration completed

Scaffolding will be removed from the Parthenon Facade during the next few days and visitors will be able to view the restored largest part of the marble roof with its friezes that made the monument, the work of the architect Mnisiklis, renowned in ancient times.

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Professor Francesco Buranelli of the Vatican suggests that forming the New Acropolis Museum as a pan-European museum may be the best way for Greece to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles. His idea was first proposed in the Greek language press a few weeks ago & was received with interest by many involved in the issue.

From:
The Times

December 4, 2008
Call to unite Parthenon marbles
Richard Owen

The never-ending tussle between Britain and Greece over the Elgin Marbles should be resolved by creating a pan-European museum in Athens at which all the fragments from the Parthenon would be brought together under a British director, a Vatican offical says.

Professor Francesco Buranelli, the head of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, said: “The moment has come to set up the first European museum, with the same kind of extraterritorial status accorded to embassies.”

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Coverage of the talk at RIBA on the New Acropolis Museum. Almost everyone who has seen it is impressed by the museum itself - will this be enough to make the British Museum enter into serious negotiations with Greece on the Marbles?

From:
The Guardian

The New Acropolis Museum: A home fit for the Elgin Marbles?
The soon-to-open museum for the Acropolis sculptures looks fantastic. But will it convince the British Museum to send the Parthenon frieze home?

Last night the president, Dimitrios Pandermalis, and the architect, Bernard Tschumi, of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens were in London to present their plans for the building, which opens sometime in early spring. They gave a clear sense of this impressive-looking museum, which is built in the shadow of the Parthenon atop ruins of late-antique buildings (which can be perceived through the glass floors of the museum’s ground floor). The plan echoes that of the Acropolis itself – the visitor will ascend through the building as if climbing the steep slopes of the hill, passing through halls filled with sculpture from the archaic temple to Athene, before reaching the very apex, where the Parthenon sculptures themselves will be displayed in a large glass-walled hall from which visitors will be able to enjoy wonderful views of Pheidias’s great temple.

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More coverage of the return of a fragment from the Parthenon (note that whilst this is a decorative element of the building, it is not a part of what is normally described as the Parthenon Sculptures (frieze, metopes & pediment). Nonetheless, it still represents yet another significant return within a single year).

From:
Press TV (Iran)

Greece retrieves Parthenon marble piece
Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:49:18 GMT

Greece has retrieved a marble fragment belonging to a Parthenon temple, which was removed by an Austrian soldier during World War II.

The piece, which was part of a frieze decorating the temple’s inner colonnade, bears an inscription saying it was taken from the Acropolis in Athens on February 16, 1943, when Greece was occupied by the Germany-led Axis powers.

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Three academics who have helped in the restitution of Parthenon fragments to Greece have been honoured at a ceremony at the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Athens News Agency

02/12/2008
Parthenon Marbles

Culture Minister Mihalis Liapis on Tuesday addressed an event held at the new Acropolis Museum in honour of three academics who have made great contributions to the effort for the return of the Parthenon Marbles currently held at the British Museum in London.

The three are Prof. Tonio Holscher, professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Prof. Louis Godart, advisor to the Italian President for the Conservation of Artistic Patrimony and professor of Mycenean Philology at Federico II University of Naples, and Prof. Antonia Sofikitou, who is chair of the Italian Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles and teaches Modern Greek Literature at the University of Palermo.

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The New Acropolis Museum in Athens once opened may provide the strongest argument yet for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
Financial Times

A manifesto for the Parthenon Marbles
By Peter Aspden
Published: November 29 2008 00:30 | Last updated: November 29 2008 00:30

It stands like a giant modernist spaceship that has belly-flopped by curious accident opposite one of the most important cultural sites on the planet. Polemics and controversy have been hard-wired into its being. It has taken decades in the planning, years in the realisation, and an extra few months beyond its intended inauguration in the fine-tuning. But, finally, the new Acropolis Museum (left), fresh home to the extraordinary artistic legacy of ancient Athens, is ready to open its doors to the public.

Next spring, visitors will set foot inside Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi’s glass-and-concrete edifice, all sharp edges and skewed angles, and address for themselves one of the the most intractable cultural disputes of modern times. When they travel to the museum’s top floor, they will see marble panels from the famous frieze that used to encircle the Parthenon, the symbol of Athenian democracy that stands like a staid, elderly relative, looking wearily across at the upstart building from its incomparable vantage point on top of the Acropolis a few hundred metres away.

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As part of the Acropolis restoration, research is being done into the use of lasers for cleaning the structural elements of the building in a similar way to the sculptures.

From:
Russia Today

Features
November 6, 2008, 17:05
Athens’ Acropolis to shine again

One of the world’s most cherished monuments is undergoing a long-overdue and well-deserved pampering.

Decades of pollution from cars and industry wreaked upon on the Greek capital have caused a dense, black coating encrusting the marble of the temples of the Acropolis.

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Further coverage of yesterday’s return of a fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures by the Vatican following previous requests. The British Museum state that this does not alter anything - they continue to follow this line though, despite events carrying on outside their reach suggesting that the rest of the world is moving in a different direction.

It is notable, that whilst the Palermo & Heidelberg fragments already returned were from relatively small museums, the Vatican Museums are a vast collection by any standards - this shows that larger institutions which tend to be less flexibly governed are also able to return pieces of the sculptures.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Vatican returns Parthenon fragment to Greece
The Associated Press
Published: November 5, 2008

ATHENS, Greece: The ancient marble head of a youth was fitted into place Wednesday at a museum in Athens in a deal that Greek officials hope will serve as a model for returning other treasures.

The one-year loan from the Vatican’s Museo Gregoriano Etrusco could be used as a way to regain other iconic Parthenon sculptures that have been systematically removed from Greece in the past. Several European museums — especially the British Museum in London — hold Parthenon artifacts and Greece has long campaigned for their return.

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The Vatican have so far only returned one piece of the Parthenon Marbles from their collection - this article however hints that another of the two remaining ones will be on its way to Greece in the coming months.

From:
Athens News Agency

11/06/2008
Vatican returns Parthenon fragment

A fragment of a Parthenon frieze returned to Greece by the Vatican’s Museum Gregoriano Etrusco was presented by Culture Minister Michalis Liapis stressing that “this gesture by one of the most important museums in Europe sets an example for others to follow and eventually restore the unity of the Parthenon Marbles”.

The special event on Wednesday was held at the New Museum of the Acropolis in the presence of Vatican’s ambassador to Greece Patrick Coveney, Greece’s ambassador to the Vatican M. Hiskakis, head of the Vatican museum’s classical antiquities department Giandomenico Spinola and Organization for the Construction of the New Museum of the Acropolis President Prof. Dimitris Pantermalis.

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Some further coverage of the loan to Greece of a Parthenon Frieze fragment by the Vatican.

Dorothy King has covered this & posted some images of the frieze fragment (& of the other two fragments that remain in the Vatican) on her website.

From:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Vatican returns fragment of Parthenon Marbles to Greece
Submitted by Mohit Joshi on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 14:29.

Athens - The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens Wednesday on a one-year loan, setting in motion what Greece hopes will be a precedent for the British Museum to return the sculptures it has.

“This is a gesture from one of the most important museums in Europe,” Greek Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said.

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