Showing 6 results for the tag: British Musuem.

November 14, 2014

Neil MacGregor on the Parthenon Marbles – Greece responds

Posted at 11:40 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

Following Kwame Opoku’s reponse to British Museum Director Neil MacGregor’s recent comments on the Parthenon Marbles, the Greek Ministry of Culture have also forwarded me their own response, highlighting the many inaccuracies & inconsistencies in MacGregor’s interview.

Parthenon Marbles in British Museum

Parthenon Marbles in British Museum

From:
Greek Ministry of Culture (by email)

Response to comments made by Neil MacGregor in an interview in the Times on 7th November

1. UNESCO, which has invited the Greek and the British Governments to take part in a mediation process to resolve the issue, is an intergovernmental organization. However, the Trustees of the British Museum are not part of the British government. It is the Trustees and not the Government that own the great cultural collections of the country.

UNESCO is indeed an intergovernmental organization. It is hard to believe that a Government would discuss an issue it does not have competence on. It is hard to believe that if there were political will from the UK for the return of the Marbles to Greece the BM would resist this will. Negotiations conducted all those years with the good services of UNESCO were between the two States (Greece and the UK). Yet, a BM representative was always there. In any case the links at all levels between the BM and the UK Government are well known. Returns have already been effected in Britain on the basis of changes in the law such as the enactment of the Human Tissue Act 2004. This Act enabled the return of human remains located in UK museum collections (under the same status as the one applying to the Marbles). Those were unethically removed from Australian Aboriginals, New Zealand Maori and Native Americans and were returned to their countries of origin. In this light persistence in formalities can only be used as an evasion of the real issue.
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Disputed artefact lists and looted artefact lists

Posted at 10:56 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Only a few days after publishing a list of disputed artefacts, the Guardian has now also published a list of looted artefacts..

Many of the comments I made in my introduction to the original piece still stand. It has been stated in the past that each artefact dispute is unique & should be judged on its own merits (i.e. the argument that return would set a precedent is unfounded). This lists shows just how diverse the category of looted artefacts is.

I’m also not quite sure how a list of the ten most notorious looted artworks can manage to omit the Parthenon Marbles.

The bust of Nefertiti in Germany's Neues Museum, claimed by Egypt

The bust of Nefertiti in Germany’s Neues Museum, claimed by Egypt

From:
Guardian

From Napoleon to the Nazis: the 10 most notorious looted artworks
Romans, Nazis, Victorian-era Brits, noughties cat-burglars – they have all stolen priceless works. Here are the most shocking art thefts of the last two millennia
Ivan Lindsay
Thursday 13 November 2014 17.31 GMT

Looting has been part of human behaviour since ancient times. The Romans did it in their very first conquest, in 396 BC. They stripped the city of Veii of anything valuable and established a template for looting that lasted over 2,000 years. It was only in 1815 that the Congress of Vienna made the first serious effort at post-conflict restitution of plundered art.

After the Romans it became standard practice for a victor to remove all treasure from the vanquished, to weaken their status. Booty also provided handy funds to pay for military campaigns.
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September 1, 2014

Can a museum be too big?

Posted at 1:06 pm in British Museum

An interesting perspective her, advocates breaking up the largest museums, to allow visitors to enjoy a better experience there, without such high levels of crowding. Institutions such as the British Museum regularly crow about the number of people who visit (with the implication of the statements being that they all see the Parthenon Marbles), but the reality is that this tells nothing about the quality of the experience.

The idea of splitting museums into more manageable chunks is nothing new – London’s Natural History Museum, the British Library & the now sadly defunct Museum of Mankind, once all fell under the auspices of the British Museum.

Some in the industry talk in horror about any event that might lead to a reduction in the collections of the encyclopaedic museums, but the reality is that if current trends continue, such breaking up of collections might become a necessity. As such, once this happens, surely restitution requests would not be seen in quite the same light as they are now, as breaking apart the integrity of a collection that had been amassed over the centuries.

Crowds at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

Crowds at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

From:
Al Jazeera

Break up the major museums to save them
August institutions should build more outposts rather than cloister themselves in big cities
August 31, 2014 6:00AM ET

The Louvre in Paris recently told The Art Newspaper that it expects its visitor numbers to rise by a third over the next decade, putting the world’s busiest art museum on track to welcome 12 million visitors annually by 2025. It’s a staggering figure that points to a growing reality facing art lovers and museumgoers: How can you expect to see and enjoy art through the chaotic crowds that are increasingly defining major museums?

In the last few years, many of the largest and most popular museums, including the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have been experiencing significant issues with crowding. The head of visitor services at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg recently admitted to The New York Times, “Such a colossal number of simultaneous viewers isn’t good for the art, and it can be uncomfortable and overwhelming for those who come to see the art.” In the same article, an art historian disparaged the situation at the Uffizi Gallery, home to some of the most famous masterpieces of the Renaissance, saying, “It seems like a tropical greenhouse. You can’t breathe.”
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August 3, 2012

Costas Tzavaras, Greece’s new Culture Minister speaks about his plans for the Parthenon Sculptures

Posted at 12:53 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

Following the elections in June, Greece now has a new Culture Minister, Costas Tzavaras. In the first interview I have seen with him since he took on the job, he speaks about various topics, including the importance of the campaign to secure the return of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum to Athens.

From:
Greek Reporter

Greek Minister of Culture On Parthenon Marbles and Greek Cultural Crisis
By Anastasios Papapostolou on July 26, 2012

Costas Tzavaras, in an exclusive interview with the Greek Reporter talks about his new priorities as Minister of Culture, sends a message to attract foreign film productions to Greece and comments on Greece’s new coalition government.

Costas Tzavaras assumed the position of the deputy Minister of Education, responsible for cultural affairs, a few weeks ago and since then he has been working hard to bring back to crisis-hit Greece what he says the country is missing: cultural prosperity. The new minister, which practically filled in what previously was the position of Minister of Culture, believes that the Greek crisis is a product of a cultural crisis that the country had been facing over the past few years and he hopes to change it.
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April 16, 2012

Campaign to return statue of goddess Anahit from the British Museum to Armenia

Posted at 1:03 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Campaigners in Armenia want the British Museum to return a statue of the goddess Anahit. It is unclear from the article, exactly how the statue came to leave Armenia in the the first place & ended up in the British Museum. It is however, clear, as in many such cases, that the sentimental value of the statue is worth far more to Armenians than it is to the general public who see it in the British Museum.

From:
The Armenian Reporter

Campaign for Anahit’s return to Armenia from British Museum
Published: Monday April 09, 2012

I am a Pre-Med student at the University of California, Irvine studying Biological Sciences. I was born and raised in Yerevan, Armenia. As a child I was taken to every major museum in Yerevan. This has contributed immensely to who I have become today and why I decided to undertake this time-consuming initiative.

I studied in the United Kingdom for some time and my constant visits to the museums led me to the discovery that the fragments of the iconic statue of the goddess Anahit whose image symbolized so much of my childhood (and history) were just sitting there confined within the few sentences of description. Reminiscing the postal stamps, 5000 Dram notes, Agathangelos, Navasard and all the Anahits that I have met throughout my life, I promised myself that upon my return to the States I would do everything in my abilities to have her repatriated to Armenia.
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April 10, 2012

Greek opera about the return of the Parthenon Marbles from London

Posted at 8:16 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Events

Imeros, an Athens based organisation have produced a new opera “Opus Elgin: the Destruction of the Parthenon”, about the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum. More information about it is available here.

Tickets for the event are available here.

Recieved by email.

World Premiere – New Greek Opera About The Return of The Parthenon Marbles From the British Museum – Press Release

Imeros is a non-for-profit organization (NFP) founded in 1995 by a group of scholars and artists based in Athens. Imeros aims to produce dance theater performances after research on a specific topic. Its original purpose was for actors, dancers, musicians and artists to collaborate and find new ways of expression. The Company was previously sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, but since February 2011 it is an independent Non-Profit Organization and its goal is to promote cultural development globally.

We are writing to invite you to our new opera “Opus Elgin: the Destruction of the Parthenon” (http://www.all4parthenon.gr/), which is an original opera by Theodore Stathis making its World Premiere on May 29th, 2012 at the Athens Concert Hall/Alexandra Triandi Stage at 8:00 PM, in Athens Greece.

We hope you can help spread the news or put us in touch with other organizations globally who are also engaged in this effort. We plan on bringing this opera around the world for the sole purpose of increasing awareness, but more importantly applying pressure on the British government to safely return the Parthenon Marbles to our new state-of the art Acropolis museum in Athens.