Times have changed a lot since the Seventh Earl of Elgin removed half the marble sculptures from the Parthenon, but looting of archaeological sites continues to be a problems for Greece, as it is in many other countries around the world. Looting is a problem that must be tackled in multiple ways, if it is to be prevented.

Protecting the sites of the looting is possible in some cases, but in somewhere such as Greece, there are vast tracts of land rich in buried relics, that have yet to be excavated. Underwater remains from shipwrecks & land areas that have become submerged presents an even trickier problem.

Blocking artefacts leaving the country is a second level of defence – but as with any type of defence against smuggling, where there are long land & sea borders, it is hard to guarantee that things do not slip through the net.

Many artefacts that are going to be traded on the international markets, tend to pass through other countries on the way to their eventual destination – the use of Geneva as a hub for trafficking in stolen artefacts is just one particularly notorious example.

Auction houses or private dealers represent the next step in the chain – the auction houses ought to be the easier of the two to stop, but recent cases show that they are often more concerned with making a sale than asking too many questions about the origins of what they are selling.

Finally, ultimate culpability rests with the buyers. If no one was willing to acquire unprovenanced artefacts, then the market would dry up – it is as simple as that. With no money in the system to drive the looting, those who are currently pilfering archaeological sites would find that there was no financial benefit in what they were doing. This is by far the most critical step & applies in equal measures to private collectors & museums. In the end, the individual that buys the artefact without asking an questions about where it came from is the only thing that creates a demand for looting around the world.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

30-06-11
Illicit antiquities trade continues to thrive in Greece
Short-staffed archaeological sites are easy targets
By Iota Sykka

The majority of visitors to state museums in Greece find the experience disappointing. There are various reasons for this, including closed halls due to staff shortages — a factor which also affects service — and impractical opening hours. However, what is a disappointing situation to many presents an ideal opportunity for a few.

The issue of museum security — particularly when it comes to safeguarding archaeological sites — is a constant headache for the Greek Ministry of Culture, which is struggling to cope with the limitations of being short-staffed.
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Two years on from the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it is still the most popular attraction in Athens, but ticket prices are rising, as the initial subsidies are gradually removed. The museum has been a resounding success story for Greece – advertising an entirely different image of the country from the typical sun washed beaches of the islands, or the protests associated with the financial crisis.

From:
Kathimerini (English edition)

Tuesday June 21, 2011
The Acropolis Museum: A reintroduction
Despite chaos in the surrounding area, organizers are busy preparing its birthday celebrations
By Iota Sykka

At 11 a.m. on Thursday, as the country was aboil with developing news on the political front, so was the area connecting Amalias Avenue with Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, as the double-parked tour coaches waiting for their passengers to come out of the Acropolis Museum were hiding the traffic lights.

The entire pedestrian area was in a state of absolute Greek pandemonium. The sightseeing train was packed with visitors, as were the nearby cafes next to the souvenir shops selling poor-quality copies of treasured antiquities. Street musicians contributed to the noise as well, while drivers flouted the no-car law up and down the pedestrianized walkway. Two years ago, when the city was feverish with the museum’s inauguration, such a state of affairs would have been unthinkable.
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The New Acropolis Museum has been shortlisted for the European Union’s prize for architecture.

From:
Greek Reporter

Acropolis Museum on Short List for European Award
Posted on 23 March 2011 by Marianna Kourti

The finalists have been shortlisted from 343 works in thirty-three European countries. The award ceremony will take place on June 20th at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain.
The six finalists are Neues Museum (Berlin, Germany) – David Chipperfield Architects / David Chipperfield; Bronks Youth Theatre (Brussels, Belgium) – MDMA – Martine De Maeseneer Architecten / Martine De Maeseneer, Dirk Van den Brande; MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts (Rome, Italy) – Zaha Hadid Architects / Zaha Hadid, Patrick Schumacher, Gianluca Racana; Concert House Danish Radio (Copenhagen, Denmark) – Ateliers Jean Nouvel / Jean Nouvel; Acropolis Museum (Athens, Greece) – Bernard Tschumi Architects / Bernard Tschumi; Rehabilitation Centre Groot Klimmendaal (Arnhem, The Netherlands) -Architectenbureau Koen van Velsen / Koen van Velsen.

The prize highlights excellence in contemporary buildings and contribution to the development of new ideas and technologies in urban evolution .
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Despite some press reports that have indicated to the contrary, the shops & restaurants in the New Acropolis Museum will remain open despite various planned strikes by workers.

From:
Kathimerini

Friday October 1, 2010 – Archive
Restaurant at museum open

The restaurant and gift shops at the Acropolis Museum will continue to operate as usual, its director Dimitris Pandermalis insisted yesterday, as he rejected reports that shutting down the Organization for the Promotion of Greek Culture (OPEP) would lead to their closure.

OPEP, whose employees’ contracts expired yesterday and are not being renewed due to public spending cutbacks, had been responsible for running the two gift shops and second-floor restaurant at the museum, which opened last summer. The museum has launched a tender for the management of the restaurant but Pandermalis said that its operation would not be affected in the meantime.

“The restaurant does not belong to OPEP,” he said in a letter to Kathimerini. “It is an area that is absolutely associated with the museum. The museum respects its visitors and aims to provide high-quality service that is free of the traditional hang-ups and failed stereotypes of the past.”

The amount of people visiting the New Acropolis Museum in its first month of opening has continued for its second month, giving a total of half a million visitors in the first two months.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Friday August 28, 2009
In Brief
ACROPOLIS MUSEUM

Over 500,000 people visited new building in last two months

More than half a million people have visited the Acropolis Museum since it opened to the public just over two months ago, the museum’s management said yesterday. More specifically, a total of 523,540 visitors have viewed the museum’s exhibits since June 20. Of these, 60 percent are foreign visitors, museum officials said. During the same two-month period, 409,000 hits by different users from 180 countries were recorded by the museum’s website, http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr.

Following coverage of the decision to censor parts of a film on show in the New Acropolis Museum, it now appears that the decision has been reached that for the time being, the film can continue to be shown in its original un-edited version.

From:
Deutsche Presse Agentur

Acropolis Museum decides to leave film of priests hacking Acropolis
Europe News
Aug 5, 2009, 10:52 GMT

Athens – The new Acropolis Museum decided to leave a short film, depicting long-robed Christians hacking away at the Acropolis, uncut despite angry protests by the powerful Greek Orthodox Church, reports said Wednesday.

Just weeks after its opening, the new museum released an informative short film to visitors about the history of the 5th century BC Parthenon temple which shows figures in long robes hacking away at the monument.
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More coverage of the court ruling that the two buildings on Dionysiou Areopagitou in front of the New Acropolis Museum will not be demolished.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Wednesday July 15, 2009
Building that blocks museum view spared

The Council of State has intervened to save a treasured art deco building on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street that was threatened with demolition because it blocked the view of the Acropolis for visitors to the New Acropolis Museum.

Sources revealed yesterday that Greece’s highest administrative court has issued a ruling reversing a 2007 judgment that would have allowed authorities to knock down the building. The court found that the building added to the appearance of the neighborhood.
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Following the official opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it is now fully open to the public for the first time. At present, due to high demand all tickets have to be booked in advance, although by the end of the week there will also be some tickets going on sale every day.

From:
Associated Press

Greece’s New Acropolis Museum opens to visitors
1 day ago

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The new Acropolis Museum opened its gates Sunday to hundreds of visitors eager to explore its vast collection of sculptures and artifacts from ancient Greece.

The museum holds more than 4,000 ancient works, including some of the best surviving classical sculptures that once adorned the Acropolis.
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Greece has built the New Acropolis Museum to re-house artefacts that there was no space for in the old museum on the Acropolis itself. It is no secret though that the key reason for the museum was to help secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
The Australian

Athens builds a home for Parthenon’s marbles
Helen Vatsikopoulos | June 20, 2009

THE New Acropolis Museum in Athens will never become a landmark building. It will not be like Joern Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, its towering tiled sails reaching over the harbour, or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, with colossal steel whorls dominating the landscape.

But the city of Athens already has such a building, Phidias’s Parthenon. He designed it in the mid-5th century BC, funded by a hefty stimulus package to rebuild the archaic temples destroyed by the Persians; it’s still standing. The temple atop the Acropolis hill overlooking central Athens survived virtually unscathed for almost 2000 years, only to suffer its worst damage in the past 400: Venetian cannon balls, Ottoman dynamite, a bad restoration and acid rain have all taken their toll, along with an act of vandalism perpetrated by one man, a British diplomat. More on Lord Elgin later.
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The opening of the New Acropolis Museum is proceeding towards the main event on 20th June. Although Greece is waiting until after the opening before announcing any new initiatives for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, most press reports are still (rightly) observing that the buildings raison d’etre is the creation of a new home for the marbles.

From:
Xinhua

New Acropolis Museum to showcase complete Parthenon sculptures
2009-06-19 12:20:41
by Liang Yeqian

ATHENS, June 19 (Xinhua) — Visitors from across the world will admire the complete sculptures of the famous Parthenon Temple for the first time when the new Acropolis Museum officially opens on June 20.

Dimitros Pantermalis, director of the new museum, told Xinhua that all of the Parthenon Temple sculptures owned by Greece will be displayed on the third floor of the new museum.
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The New Acropolis Museum represents the most important step forward in the campaign to reunify the Parthenon Marbles since they were originally removed from the Acropolis over two hundred years ago. The heirs of Lord Elgin will not be invited tot he ceremony, although dwelling on this aspect seems to be something led by the press rather than an important part of the opening. If the heirs of Lord Elgin see the museum, maybe they will realsie that it is the best location for the sculptures & put their support behind the reunification campaigns.

From:
Scotsman

Greece steps up marbles bid with new museum opening
Published Date: 21 May 2009
By Renee Maltezou in Athens

GREECE will open a new Acropolis museum in June, with the aim of bringing back historical artefacts exhibited in the British Museum in London.
Greece has long campaigned to retrieve the Parthenon sculptures, saying they were an integral part of one of the world’s most important monuments, but the British Museum has refused to return the treasures.

The Acropolis museum, built below the Parthenon and the other classical age marble temples of the Acropolis, has experienced years of delay with legal battles and missed deadlines plaguing its construction.
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Further details have now been released of the opening events planned for the New Acropolis Museum’s inauguration in June. The events will be spread over a number of days as the sheer number of people invited would not fit in the building for one single mass opening event.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Tuesday May 5, 2009
Celebrating beneath the Acropolis
Inaugural events for new museum scheduled to last four days and include long guestlist
Work in progress. Crews working outside the New Acropolis Museum on Makriyianni Street. The much-awaited museum is scheduled to open its doors next month. (Photo: Nikos Bardopoulos)
By Iota Sykka – Kathimerini

The celebrations for the inauguration of the New Acropolis Museum are set to last four days. Though festive in spirit, they will be far from the extravaganzas envisioned by previous culture ministers. Essentially, the celebrations, which start on June 20, will act as a platform for a wide-ranging meeting on both a political and a scientific level.

In the meantime, Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras is working on the project on a daily basis.
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