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.
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