Actor Pierce Brosnan has been in Athens as publicity for his latest film. Whilst doing a television interview, he was asked about the Parthenon Sculptures & expressed his support for their return.

Interviewer: I have a question about the Parthenon Marbles which are now in the British Museum
Pierce: The Elgin Marbles?
Interviewer: The Parthenon, as we say…
Pierce: The Parthenon. They Should come back. They should come back. Sure. You should have them. They’re yours.

Although it is now more than six months since the official opening of the building, positive reviews of the New Acropolis Museum keep on coming. This review is from an architectural specification magazine, hence the focus on the materials that the building is constructed from.

From:
Specifier (Australia)

Issue 189
The New Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi
Writer: Robbie Moore

In mid-2007, the Old Acropolis Museum shut its doors. Its collection of giants and centaurs, metopes, pediments and parts of the Parthenon Frieze, were wrapped in plastic shrouds and packed in reinforced wooden boxes, and hauled into the air over Athens. The artworks, some weighing two and a half tonnes, were passed between Europe’s three largest lifting cranes on their way to their new, €130 million home. Now, two years later, the New Acropolis Museum – one of the most significant and frankly political cultural projects of the last decade – has finally opened its doors.

The New Acropolis Museum is as much about the artifacts it’s missing as about the artifacts it holds. Its top-floor gallery, rotated 23 degrees to align with the Parthenon, makes a plain and eloquent case for the return of the Elgin Marbles. The gallery contains a small number of real pieces from the Parthenon, alongside replicas of artifacts taken two hundred years ago by Lord Elgin and now residing in the British Museum. The replicas were not given a fake weathered patina, but were left a perfect, toothpaste white. The contrast with the ancient stones is striking, and deliberate. This is a memorial as much as a museum, mourning a loss.

The architect of the New Acropolis Museum, Bernard Tschumi, is a supporter of the cause. His design destroys an argument used by the British since the 1970s, that Athens was too polluted with smoke and sulphur dioxide to look after the marbles. Athens’ air had already improved with the new metro system and the pedestrianisation of the historic district, but Tschumi further protects the museum’s antiquities with a sophisticated, highly controlled micro-environment. The Caryatids, for instance, were sealed behind glass in the Old Acropolis Museum, but here stand free. The interior conditions are easily preferable to those in the British Museum. The Elgin Marbles are surrounded by four walls and lit from above by diffuse daylight and spotlights, while the New Acropolis Museum’s Parthenon Gallery is open on all sides to the unblinking Greek sun. The works can be viewed, therefore, in the conditions they were intended. “Now that the building is finished and everybody will be able to see the quality of light that you get here”, Tschumi told Wallpaper*, “and the way they will be displayed here compared to the way they are displayed in the British Museum, the return [of the Elgin Marbles] will make sense straight away”.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Among the vast numbers of disputed artefacts in museums & galleries, some have a high profile, whilst others are barely known. Time Magazine has attempted to draw up a list of what they feel are some of the most currently significant cases.

This article was published a few months ago, but I only recently came across it – explaining the fact that the information on the Louvre’s Egyptian Frescos is already out of date.

From:
Time

Top 10 Plundered Artifacts
History is big business. Plundered art and antiquities trade to the tune of at least $3 billion a year, much to the chagrin of nations struggling to reclaim their lost artifacts. In honor of a recent spat between the Egyptian government and the Louvre museum in Paris over the fate of fresco fragments, TIME examines 10 plundered antiquities and the conflicts they’ve created.

The Louvre’s Egyptian Frescos

A set of ancient fresco fragments is at the center of a nasty feud between Paris’s Louvre Museum and the Egyptian government. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s antiquities department, claims the Louvre bought the fragments last year despite knowing they were taken from a tomb in Egypt’s storied Valley of the Kings in the 1980s, a prime spot for grave-robbers. Egypt, which has made reclaiming ancient art taken from its country a top priority, said they would sever cooperation with the Louvre unless the fragments were returned. A museum representative claimed on Oct. 7 that the Louvre was unaware the fragments were stolen, and said the museum would consider sending the fresco pieces back to Egypt.
Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Dimitrios Pantermalis is visiting Nicosia next week to give a lecture about the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Cyprus Mail

President of Acropolis Museum in Cyprus
Published on February 17, 2010

PRESIDENT of the New Acropolis Museum, archaeologist Dimitrios Pantermalis, will visit Cyprus next week and will give a lecture in Nicosia.

According to an announcement issued by the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, which is organising the lecture, Pantermanis will speak on the New Acropolis Museum, its Architecture and its Exhibition Programme.

Alex Kapranos, lead singer of the band Franz Ferdinand has spoken out in his Twitter feed on his support for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

From:
alkapranos

Just discovered my father follows me on this thing. Hi Dad. Good luck getting your marbles back.
10:37 PM Feb 1st from web

alkapranos

Now he’s retired he spends his time campaigning to have the Parthenon Marbles returned to Greece where they were stolen from.
10:43 PM Feb 1st from web

alkapranos

Stolen by a Scot – a descendent of Robert The Bruce – then sold to the English for £30K.
10:47 PM Feb 1st from web

alkapranos

British Museum always trots out the same old patronising crap about how they look after them in a way the savages in Greece never could.
10:50 PM Feb 1st from web

More positive coverage of the New Acropolis Museum which opened last year.

From:
Flavorwire

The Acropolis Goes Modern
1:01 pm Monday Jan 25, 2010 by Kelsey Keith

After inevitable delays — including the discovery of an ancient Athenian city under the building site — The New Acropolis Museum is open for business, packing in visitors to the historic but semi-rundown neighborhood of Makrygianni in Athens. The thoughtful design by former Columbia architecture dean Bernard Tschumi and team positions the 226,000 square foot museum over the footprint of the long-ruined city; the exhibition space — ten times larger than that of the previous edifice — provides what could someday be a permanent home for the hotly contested Elgin Marbles and other looted artifacts. Hellenic architecture porn after the jump.

Bernard Tschumi Architects won the bid in 2001 in a design competition chaired by Santiago Calatrava; their winning plan “created a deliberately non-monumental structure whose simple and precise design invokes the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greek architecture” while establishing a dialogue between the museum’s exhibition spaces and the existing Acropolis buildings.

The New Acropolis Museum which opened last year forms a gleaming new home to potentially house all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
Los Angeles Times

A gleaming new showcase for the Acropolis
Athens finally has a place to display the hotly contested Elgin Marbles, plus statues, friezes and other artifacts from the ancient Greek site.
By Suzanne Muchnic
January 24, 2010

Reporting from Athens – For advocates of the repatriation of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century and long housed at the British Museum in London, the new Acropolis Museum is proof — at last — that Greece has a safe place to display the hotly contested artworks.

For Athenians who live and work near the Acropolis, the looming modern structure at the southeastern base of the hill is a mixed blessing. The $200-million, 226,000-square-foot museum has transformed the area of Makrygianni, boosting property values while dwarfing other buildings in the neighborhood.
Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who read the first edition of Mary Beard’s book; The Parthenon, will be pleased to hear that a revised version of it is planned, which will take into account the fact that the New Acropolis Museum discussed in the first edition has now opened & is quite liked by the author.

The Parthenon (Wonders of the World)
Author: Mary Beard
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 1861973012

From:
The Times Blogs

January 15, 2010
The “new” Parthenon, my new edition?

I wrote my little book on the Parthenon about a decade ago. It looked at the material of, and from, the temples in all its different locations — from the Acropolis itself to the diaspora of the Parthenon in London, Paris, Rome and Wurzburg and other places.

Things have changed a little since then. A small fragment of the Parthenon frieze (and I mean very small) has been sent “back” to Athens from Heidelberg (thanks, largely to a Greek then in the administration of the University of Heidelberg); another, slightly larger piece, has gone back from Palermo.
Read the rest of this entry »

A new website (http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr) has created a virtual representation of the surviving frieze fragments of the frieze of the Parthenon in a way that is easily accessible for anyone to view.

From:
Cordis

2010-01-14
The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze is presented in a new website (http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr) which utilizes new technologies to present and elevate cultural content online. This new application, which was carried out by The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre (EKT), is valuable for specialists and the general public alike.

The Parthenon Frieze, a unique work of art, is presented in a new website (http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr) which utilizes new technologies to present and elevate cultural content online. This new application, which was carried out by The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism (YSMA-Acropolis Restoration Service, Department of Information and Education) in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre (EKT), is valuable for specialists and the general public alike.
Read the rest of this entry »

The restoration of the Propylaia which forms the gateway to the Acropolis has now been completed, ending another chapter in the Acropolis’s extensive restoration programme.

From:
Athens News Agency

12/22/2009
Restoration of Acropolis Propylaea completed

All scaffolding and cranes were fully removed from the Propylaea of the Acropolis, the monumental entrance, or gateway, to the Acropolis, on the weekend following completion of the restoration work on the central building of the structure.

The Propylaea was built under the direction of Athenian leader Pericles, but the building itself was designed by the architect Mnesicles, while construction began in 437 BCE and was terminated in 432 BCE, while the building was still unfinished.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another positive review of the New Acropolis Museum – this time from The Irish Times.

From:
The Irish Times

The Irish Times – Monday, December 21, 2009
The gods are in the details
EILEEN BATTERSBY

The New Acropolis Museum, which sits below the Parthenon, is a fitting tribute to the area’s Classical past and its myths about Greek gods, as its curator, Dimitrios Pandermalis, explains

IT HAS TO BE this way; the finest of modern design had to bow to the gods. And in Athens it could be no other way. High above the city is the hill of the Acropolis, the citadel upon which the remains of the Parthenon, the finest Doric temple in the world, stands.
Read the rest of this entry »