I’m in two minds about the recently announced collaboration between the British Museum & Wikipedia to try & enrich the articles on the Museum’s artefacts i the online encyclopaedia. While improving of articles & providing images to supplement them is to be welcomed, I worry at the same time that the exercise may also end up pushing the British Museum’s own personal worldview as being an indisputable fact. There are many artefacts within the British Museum who’s ownership is disputed, but the institution always tries to gloss over this where possible, or falls back on the widely discredited Universal Museum argument to justify their current position.

Museums working with resources such as Wikipedia is a great idea – but only if they don’t use it to try & scrub out other versions of the stories that they are telling.

From:
New York Times

Venerable British Museum Enlists in the Wikipedia Revolution
By NOAM COHEN
Published: June 4, 2010

The British Museum has begun an unusual collaboration with Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia, to help ensure that the museum’s expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference’s pages.

About 40 Wikipedia contributors in the London area spent Friday with a “backstage pass” to the museum, meeting with curators and taking photographs of the collection. And in a curious reversal in status, curators were invited to review Wikipedia’s treatment of the museum’s collection and make a case that important pieces were missing or given short shrift.
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In many ways, the actions of people like Lord Elgin were a product of their time – it is assumed that what was tolerated then would not still be seen as acceptable today. The term Elginisme was used by the French to describe the practice of stealing antique fittings from old houses & in this sense it appears that for the super rich, this practice continues in the same way it always has done.

After the end of the original article, is a response by SAFE.

From:
New York Times

Trophy Hunters With Their Eye on Interiors
By JOYCE WADLER
Published: June 16, 2010

BRAGGING rights for homeowners are fleeting, hard to hold as a fistful of fog. You think your home is special because your backsplash is covered in tile imported from Mexico? There are those who think nothing of dispatching their architects and builders to the ends of the earth to personally scope out far more exotic goods — to the Middle East for the perfect limestone, even as bombs are going off, or to Indonesia for centuries-old reclaimed teak.

For the ultra-high-end contractor, it’s just part of a day’s work.

Consider John Finton, a Los Angeles contractor who is known (at least to his press agent) as “a modern day Indiana Jones.”
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I’m fairly unconvinced by the viewpoint represented in this article. The argument is never about where the impact of the Parthenon Marbles is greater, but about where they actually belong & who they belong to.

From:
New York Times

Abroad
Who Draws the Borders of Culture?

Swarms of visitors see the Elgin marbles daily in the British Museum. The Greeks want them moved to a new museum near the Parthenon, but would their impact be greater there?
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: May 4, 2010

IT was gridlock in the British Museum the other morning as South African teenagers, Japanese businessmen toting Harrods bags, and a busload of German tourists — the usual crane-necked, camera-flashing babel of visitors — formed scrums before the Rosetta Stone, which Egyptian authorities just lately have again demanded that Britain return to Egypt. From the Egyptian rooms the crowds shuffled past the Assyrian gates from Balawat (Iraq is another country pleading for lost antiquities) and past the Roman statue of the crouching Aphrodite (ditto Italy), then headed toward the galleries containing what are known in Britain as the Elgin marbles (but in Greece as the Parthenon marbles, or simply booty), where passers-by plucked pamphlets from a rack.
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Egypt wants the British Museum to return the Rosetta Stone – This is one piece that they have asked for many times before, but to no success so far. The retentionist arguments are typically following the usual patterns though of claiming that the country demanding the return of the artefact did not exist at the time the artefact was created (With artefacts of this age, it is hard to believe that any case would not fall foul of this argument, which neglects the ties between the artefacts & the locality in which it originated – whatever that area might be called now). Another often repeated argument suggests that the artefacts would have been neglected if it had not been taken (which is entirely speculative & relies on assumptions – there is also the issue of whether protecting / popularising a piece really reinforces ownership of it, or allows for its continued retention).

The same arguments keep coming out every time – as a means of perpetuating the status quo rather than trying to actually deal with the issues or see the oter side’s point of view in any way.

From:
New York Times

A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: November 16, 2009

Zahi Hawass regards the Rosetta Stone, like so much else, as stolen property languishing in exile. “We own that stone,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking as the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The British Museum does not agree — at least not yet. But never underestimate Dr. Hawass when it comes to this sort of custody dispute. He has prevailed so often in getting pieces returned to what he calls their “motherland” that museum curators are scrambling to appease him.
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More coverage of the reversal of the original decision to censor depictions of the iconoclasm from a short fim about the history of the Athenian Acropolis which is on display in the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Agence France-Presse

Agence France-Presse – 8/4/2009 4:02 PM GMT
Acropolis Museum backs down in Parthenon video row

Greece’s new Acropolis Museum on Tuesday said it will undo controversial editing of a video showing the Parthenon temple vandalised by early Christians in a row that has sparked complaints of Church-backed censorship.

The video will be restored after its maker, renowned French-Greek filmaker Costa-Gavras, said he meant to attach no blame to Christian priests for the destruction, museum director Dimitris Pantermalis said.
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Following their complaints about the depiction or priests damaging sculptures on the Parthenon in a video on show at the New Acropolis Museum, the Greek Orthodox church has been successful in getting these scenes removed from the film.

The original video can still be seen here.

From:
New York Times

Scene Cut From Athens Museum Film After Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 25, 2009

Filed at 5:48 p.m. ET

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A scene from an animated film shown to visitors at the new Acropolis Museum that depicts Christian priests destroying parts of the Parthenon has been deleted following protests by the Greek Orthodox Church.

The creator of the segment, Greek-born French filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras, has demanded that his name be taken off the film credits in protest.
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The Parthenon Marbles have been displayed in London for nearly two hundred years & many people have benefited from them being there during that time. Now though, it is time for the British Museum to re-asses the situation & consider whether they would be better displayed in Greece.

From:
New York Times

Majestic in Exile
By NIKOS KONSTANDARAS
Published: June 18, 2009

As a Greek, I have to visit the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum whenever I am in London.

I understand the strong feelings of my compatriots who want to see these unsurpassed sculptures returned home, ending the wrong done by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, two centuries ago. I feel the sense of dislocation — the incongruity — of the brilliance of Classical Athens at its peak trapped in a dull northern light, carried off by a foreign aristocrat and sold at a time when Greece itself was enslaved and its people unable to prevent the looting of their treasures.
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Few who have been inside the completed New Acropolis Museum would be able to argue that the sculptures could be equally well displayed in any other location outside Athens. Certainly, they may raise other arguments, such as the legalities of ownership, or how the sculptures supposedly form the basis for another institution, but the argument that they are better displayed elsewhere should now be considered irreparably null & void. Nowhere else is it possible to see the sculptures & the building that they were once an integral part of in the same glance. The pattern of light & shadows of the sculptures is replicated, as is the exact original spatial arrangement of them. Only in Athens is it possible to get a tru understanding of the scale & significance of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
New York Times

Elgin Marble Argument in a New Light
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: June 23, 2009

ATHENS — Not long before the new Acropolis Museum opened last weekend, the writer Christopher Hitchens hailed in this newspaper what he called the death of an argument.

Britain used to say that Athens had no adequate place to put the Elgin Marbles, the more than half of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and pediments that Lord Elgin spirited off when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago. Since 1816 they have been prizes of the British Museum. Meanwhile, Greeks had to make do with the leftovers, housed in a ramshackle museum built in 1874.
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The New Acropolis Museum has put the issue of the Parthenon Marbles in the international spotlight. There are now moves underway to build on this position & push forward on the wave of public opinion to implement new moves to deal with the situation. This was always the plan of the Greek Ministry of Culture – that the museum should be appreciated for what it was, without the press coverage dwelling on the Marbles issue, paving the way for the next chapter of the campaign once the dust had started to settle.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/22/2009
Karamanlis to brief President Papoulias

Prime Μinister Costas Karamanlis will pay a call on President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias shortly after noon on Monday. Karamanlis will brief the President on the outcome of the European Union summit late last week in Brussels, which mainly focused on the problem of illegal migration, and on the decisions taken.Earlier, Karamanlis will meet with visiting Vietnamese deputy prime minister and foreign minister Phan Gia Khiem. Οn Saturday, at his speech during the inauguration of the New Acropolis museum stressed “The Acropolis Museum is a reality for all Greeks; for all the people of the world. It is a modern monument, open, luminous and is harmoniously intertwined with Parthenon itself. It permits the Attica sun to shed its light on the ancient works of culture and allows the visitor to enjoy and appreciate the details of the exhibits. This modern monument narrates the history of democracy, art, rituals and everyday life. It succeeds in harmonically linking antiquity with the modern world of the technology and imagery. That’s why pioneering,” Karamanlis told the audience of dignitaries, which included lead architects Bernard Tschumi and Michael Photiadis.

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A selection of photo gallery articles that showcase the New Acropolis Museum can be seen at the following websites.

From:
Financial Times

Slideshow: The new Acropolis Museum
Published: June 19 2009 15:12 | Last updated: June 19 2009 15:12

The new Acropolis Museum in Athens, containing the world’s finest collection of ancient Greek sculpture, opens to the public on Monday.

The Greek government hopes its opening will help revive an international campaign to bring back the Elgin marbles – sculptures from the Acropolis temples displayed in the British Museum in London.
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Christopher Hitchens writes about the reasons why the New Acropolis Museum will be the most suitable location for the display of all surviving fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor
A Home for the Marbles
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Published: June 18, 2009

LONDON — This weekend, the new museum of the Acropolis will open its doors in Athens, in a striking modern building situated at the foot of the rock itself.

For a long time, it has not really been possible for a visitor to Greece to visit the buildings on that most famous of all hills, and also the sculpture that used to adorn them in the days of the cult of Pallas Athena.
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The admission charges for the New Acropolis Museum have now been published & at one euro for the first six months, it is likely to be packed with visitors. The British Museum often makes statements about how the Parthenon Marbles there can be seen free of charge, but neglects to admit that they do charge for many other exhibits there. In the end, if an admission charge is reasonable (which even the eventual five Euro charge will be), then surely the overall visitor experience is more important than the absolute bottom line costs, especially considering that many people will have spent far large amounts to get to the museums in the first place.

From:
Reuters

Greece aims to bring back Parthenon relics from Britain
Wed May 20, 2009 6:13pm BST

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece will open a new Acropolis Museum in June, its culture minister said Wednesday, with the aim of bringing back historical monuments currently exhibited in the British Museum in London.

Greece has campaigned for decades to retrieve the Parthenon sculptures from the British Museum and said they were an integral part of one of the world’s most important monuments, but the British Museum has refused to return the treasures.
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