Petros Alivizatos, Greece’s deputy culture minister, has met with the Finnish Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. He pointed out the importance of raising the profile of the issue again, particularly because of the focus on Greek related stories about Britain, because of the upcoming Olympics.

From:
Greek Reporter

Greek Deputy Minister of Culture Meets With Finnish Committee for Restitution of Parthenon Marbles
By Stella Tsolakidou on January 25, 2012 in news

During his formal visit to Finland, the Greek Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism, Petros Alivizatos, has met with the Finnish Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles.

The meeting was attended by the Vice President of the Committee and Professor of the Modern Greek language at the University of Helsinki, Mrs. Mika Kajava, the Treasurer of the Committee, Mrs. Teodora Oker-Blom, the Secretary of the Committee and lawyer, Mr. Eero Heimolinna, and the YLE journalist Jari Niemelä.
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Michael Hoff is giving a lecture on the Elgin Marbles at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana on Thursday 12th April.

From:
Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Art historian speaks on archaeology controversy
Posted: Friday, April 6, 2012 12:00 am | Updated: 10:40 am, Thu Apr 5, 2012.

Michael Hoff presents “Lord Elgin and the Parthenon Marbles: Two Hundred Years of Controversy,” Thursday, April 12, at 6 p.m. at the Museum of the Rockies Hager Auditorium. Hosted by the Archaeological Institute of America, Bozeman chapter, this lecture is free and open to the public.

Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, who had been appointed the English ambassador to the Ottoman court, was responsible for the removal of many of the sculpted statues and reliefs from the Parthenon. His purpose was to enlighten European culture by bringing to London examples of the best sculpture from Athens, and spurred on by the knowledge that Napoleon’s agents were also actively seeking to acquire the marbles. Elgin’s zeal, along with well-placed bribes, allowed his own agents to proceed beyond the original limits of his permit granted by the Turkish authorities.
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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.

Quite aside from all the other ethical issues about purchasing ancient artefacts on the black market at bargain prices, there is also a high chance, that you might not get exactly what you thought you were paying for. Quite why people think that someone who would loot ancient sites is likely to be true to their word, in what they claim something is is another matter.

One also has to ask, how someone expected to pass off as legitimate, exact copies of works from a major museum.

From:
BBC News

3 April 2012 Last updated at 16:23
‘Ancient’ Greek statue found in sheep pen is fake

An “ancient” Greek statue found in a sheep pen north-west of Athens last week has now been deemed a fake.

At first, archaeologists at Greece’s Culture ministry thought the figure of a woman dated from the 6th century BC.
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A humorous look (which raises a lot of important issues) about whether the Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece & some of the implications that such a move might have if it did take place.

From:
Huffington Post

Losing Our Marbles: Should Britain Return the Elgin Marbles to Greece?
Posted: 4/04/2012 00:00

The unwritten rules of decorum state it is impolite to discuss sex, politics or religion at dinner parties. I would like to add one more topic to that list – cultural repatriation. As discursive stink-bombs go it’s not often a headline act, but there are few controversies more likely to invoke a full-on food fight during the middle of the cheese course than the concept of returning archaeological heritage to various peoples around the globe. Now, just months from the Olympics, the campaign is being stepped up once more for the return of the Elgin Marbles to the Greek nation, and another messy argument seems inevitable.

First thing’s first, why are they the Elgin Marbles? Well, here lies our first trip hazard – we do not refer to them as the Parthenon Marbles (the building they were intended for) or the Phidian Marbles (the sculptor who crafted them), but instead they have taken the name of the aristocrat who nabbed them from Greece. As far as I am aware, lumps of rock are unaffected by Stockholm Syndrome, so it’s not the Marbles themselves who are identifying with their kidnapper. No, it’s the British people who have dubbed them Elgin’s Marbles, in gratitude for the Lord’s generosity in selling them, at a reduced price, to the nation in 1816. So, already Britain has committed an act of appropriation through nominative rebranding. The name implies they were Elgin’s to sell in the first place.
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More coverage of the problems facing Greece’s ancient sites, as a result of the country’s continuing financial difficulties. Unfortunately, it seems at the moment that the end of these problems is a long way off, so the issues are not going to disappear quickly, although help from other countries in blocking sales of looted artefacts helps to limit the market for such items.

From:
Agence France Presse

Amid debt crisis, archaeology Greece’s Achilles heel
By Isabel Malsang (AFP)

ATHENS — Faced with massive public debt, Greece is finding that its fabled antiquity heritage is proving a growing burden — with licensed digs postponed, illegal ones proliferating, museum staff trimmed and valuable pieces stolen.

“Greece’s historic remains have become our curse,” whispered an archaeologist at a recent media event organised to protest spending cuts imposed on the country for the past two years as a condition for European Union and International Monetary Fund loans.
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A reader responds to the article in the Guardian about the reasons why the Parthenon Marbles weren’t the only special case for restitution.

From:
Guardian

Series: Brief letters
Tuesday 3 April 2012 21.00 BST

Mike Pitts (Can we have our past back?, G2, 3 April) writes “it should be noted that none of the Parthenon sculptures can be set on the original building, they have to be exhibited in museums, wherever they may be”. There is only one appropriate museum, constructed in the hope of the sculptures’ eventual return: the excellent Acropolis museum. Here there is a full-scale reconstruction of the Parthenon, on the same alignment, and within view of it. The casts that now adorn it could be sent to Britain, and the originals returned to their rightful place.

Mary Lambell
Reigate, Surrey

The Acropolis Museum in Athens has now been added to Google’s Art Project.

You can view the actual project page for the museum here.

From:
The Next Web

Google’s Art Project grows larger with 151 museums online across 40 countries
3rd April 2012 by Jamillah Knowles

Google has announced that Google Art Project, where art lovers, students and armchair travellers can explore the visually creative world, has seen a major expansion. Now culture fans will be able to explore sculpture, street art and photographs from 151 museums in 40 countries.

The service was launched last year as a successful “20% project”, where Google employees can spend 20% of their time working on personal projects. It allows users to browse thousands of works of art in exceptional detail and uses technology like Picasa and App Engine along with technology that enables Street View to enter museums and collections.
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As well as eighteen artefacts in the Metropolitan Museum, Turkey is requesting the return of many other disputed artefacts in other museums across the USA.

From:
Los Angeles Times

Turkey asks U.S. museums for return of antiquities
By Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2012, 8:48 p.m.

The government of Turkey is asking American museums to return dozens of artifacts that were allegedly looted from the country’s archaeological sites, opening a new front in the search for antiquities smuggled out of their original countries through an illicit trade.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection are among the institutions that the Turkish government has contacted, officials say.
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This article appears as a response to the previous article in the Guardian. There are many things that make the Parthenon Sculptures a special case – the fact that they form part of a greater whole & that they were designed to be seen in a specific context, not as an object could be easily relocated are just a couple of them. This is not to deny that other cases have merit to them as well – each case should be judged alone, as they are so different. The differences are not just in the objects themselves, but in their cultural significance, where they were taken from, when they were taken, the circumstances surrounding their removal etc.

In cases such as the Parthenon Marbles, Greece has previously made clear offers that if the sculptures were returned, they would provide Britain with other temporary exhibitions of similar value (a very hard thing to assess). Temporary exhibitions are the main thing that draws people back on return visits to the British Museum, so surely having these regularly arranged for them would result in win-win situation for the museum?

From:
Guardian

Are the Parthenon marbles really so special?
Mike Pitts
Monday 2 April 2012 20.30 BST

The British Museum has had only one request to return something from its vast collections that it regards as official. The Greek government has asked the British government if it can have the Parthenon marbles back. Stephen Fry also thinks the issue of these sculptures is unique. In December last year, in a blog picked up over the weekend by a restitution lobby group, Fry wrote: “The Parthenon affair is a special case.”

Which it is. That stunning building embodies the culture that gave us democracy, the Olympic Games and all that classical stuff we used to be taught at school. It inspired the Renaissance and Byron, and now the many who would like to see the bits in the British Museum – about half the surviving sculptures – given back to Greece.
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A Greek based campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles have written an open letter to British Prime Minister, David Cameron, calling for their return.

From:
Global Greek World

Saturday, March 31, 2012
Open Letter to Mr David Cameron re The Parthenon Sculptures Issue and the London Olympic Games

The following is the text of the Open Letter to Mr David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, which was issued today by Mr Alexis Mantheakis, Chairman of the International Parthenon Sculptures Action Committee Inc (NZ), requesting the repatriation of the Parthenon Sculptures. We are pleased to be part of the IPSACI movement from the very first day, supporting Greece’s just demand for the return home of these unique works of art pillaged by Elgin and which remain imprisoned at the British Museum…

To The Rt. Honourable Mr. David Cameron

Dear Prime Minister,

Re – The Parthenon Sculptures Issue and the London Olympic Games

My country, Greece is currently suffering from one of the worst upheavals in its history, with its institutions and economy hanging in the balance and its people being subjected to unprecedented peacetime suffering and tensions for reasons every Greek citizen and politician knows. In the past we, of Greece, a small but inordinately proud nation, stood virtually alone at your side when Europe collapsed during the Second World War. Despite the terrible cost we would have to pay in lives and property we did not, as your allies, hesitate for a moment to stand up to the vastly numerically superior forces of Hitler and Mussolini, turning the tide of the war long enough to delay the deployment of German forces to attack on the Eastern front. The result was, as your eminent predecessor Sir Winston Churchill declared “If there had not been the virtue and courage of the Greeks, we do not know which the outcome of World War II would have been.”
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Once again, the dimming of the lights on the Acropolis in Athens is one of the highlights of Earth Hour, an event organised by the WWF & celebrated around the world.

You can view some before & after pictures of the event here.

From:
Guardian

Earth Hour will be watched over from space as the lights go out
Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 March 2012 14.46 BST

Earth Hour, the environmentally symbolic annual switch-off of lights for one hour this Saturday night, is to extend into space this year, with the International Space Station taking part for the first time. A post-Gadafi Libya will also be a newcomer to the event.

The Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, who this week oversaw the trickier task of receiving supplies from one of Europe’s unmanned spacecraft, will share photos of Earth and live commentary as landmarks from the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House switch off their lights. WWF, the event’s organisers, say this year will see record participation, with 5,411 cities and towns, and 147 countries taking part, up from 5,251 and 135 in 2011.
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