The New Acropolis Museum serves many purposes, not least the exhibition of the countless artefacts that would not possibly fit in the previous building on the monument. The main underlying reason for its existence is clear to all observers though – to secure the return of the Elgin Marbles.

From:
The National (Abu Dhabi)

Bringing it all back?
Richard Holledge
Last Updated: May 31. 2009 7:03PM UAE / May 31. 2009 3:03PM GMT

The message is clear. The publicity may well be about the daring architecture designed to house 4,000 artefacts from Greece’s glorious past but the opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens next month is about the Elgin Marbles. It’s about the long, unrelenting campaign by Greece to have them returned by the British Museum.

Stand in the top floor of the new building, a glass-fronted lozenge skewed out of kilter with the exhibition space below and the visitor stands face to face with the Parthenon 300 metres away. In its vast hall will be a frieze which once graced the Acropolis, built in 479BC, a symbol of Athens at the zenith of its powers. About half of the carvings are in the mellow tones of weathered marble which have survived in Athens and the others – copies of those in London – are in casts of glaring white. In the British Museum the frieze looks inward from its gallery walls. In Athens it looks out at the visitors and over their shoulder to the Acropolis. The display says: the Marbles belong here. In this museum. In Athens.
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As a high precision modern restoration project using the latest technology, the Acropolis Restoration project that has been running for the last 30 years must be without parallel. Some of the work was needed to negate previous problematic restoration works on the site, but much of it was necessary purely to stabilise the buildings & re-incorporate new fragments that had been excavated from the site.

From:
Deutsche Presse Agentur

2,350 tons of marble restored, replaced for Acropolis restoration
Europe News
May 29, 2009, 13:32 GMT

Athens – Some 2,350 tons of marble were restored or replaced over the past three decades for the massive project to restore the ancient Acropolis monuments, reports said Friday.

Maria Ioannidou, a senior Culture Ministry official was quoted by the Greek daily Kathimerini as saying more than 1,000 architects and archaeologists restored or replaced a total of 2,350 tons of marble during the restoration project.
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Spiked has predictably written a favourable review of James Cuno’s latest work on why ancient artefacts are best retained by the museums that currently hold them whether or not they were acquired by them legitimately.

From:
Spiked

How to preserve the future of museums
Whose Culture? – a collection of essays defending the vital importance of museums – is a welcome challenge to repatriation policies underpinned by identity politics.
by Tiffany Jenkins

There is a thirteenth century ivory casket on show at the Art Institute of Chicago. The box was made from an elephant’s tusk, probably found in southern Africa and then brought to Sicily, Italy, by Muslim traders from the Swahili coast. It was once used as a Christian reliquary and it bears an inscription in Arabic. Visitors to the Art Institute can also view the fourteenth-century German monstrance made of gilt silver around a translucent vessel. The holder for this relic was a perfume bottle made in Fatimid Egypt.

The ivory casket and the monstrance are just two of many works at the Art Institute which reflect connections between cultures. Artefacts are created through interactions between people, through exchanges of ideas and materials. Questions around who ‘owns’ such objects, where they should be and what meanings we draw from them are at the heart of a debate currently raging amongst archaeologists, museum professionals, nation states and various claimant groups. Now, the once beleaguered side of the debate is finally standing up, arguing loudly that museums are, in fact, good places to keep artefacts and art work and that sending objects back to their assumed countries of origin – which has been the dominant view until now – is not always a good idea.
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Following a lecture earlier in the year by Dimitrios Pantermalis who has overseen the entire New Acropolis Museum project, Global Atlanta looks forward to the actual opening of the museum next month.

From:
Goblal Atlanta

Athens, Greece, to Celebrate Opening of New Acropolis Museum
Phil Bolton
Atlanta – 05.28.09

It’s official. The New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, is scheduled to open on June 20 after an eight-year campaign to get it designed and built.

“The opening is a big thing for us,” Greece’s consul in Atlanta, Vassilios Gouloussis, told GlobalAtlanta. “We have fulfilled our promise to give to the world a state of the art museum.”
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As the summer holiday season approaches, many people visiting Greece will be passing through Athens for a few days on their way to the Islands. Many travel articles have picked up on the fact that the New Acropolis Museum represents a completely new experience which could be the highlight of such a trip.

From:
Evening Standard

Discover ancient and modern Greece
Charlotte Ross
27.05.09

Not so long ago, Greece was stuck firmly in the past. My first visit, age 10, was to a country of basic beds and jaw-dropping monuments.

For a glimpse of the latter, you could happily forgive the former. Now accommodation has fast-forwarded a century or so, with some hotels rivalling the ruins as attractions. On the island of Santorini, it’s a close-run contest.
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As Bernard Tschumi looks back on the New Acropolis Museum project that he began when he won the competition in 2001, he discuses why he thinks that his building is the best possible home for the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
Bloomberg News

Return Elgin Marbles, Says Acropolis Museum Creator: Interview
Interview by Maria Petrakis

May 27 (Bloomberg) — Bernard Tschumi can afford a smile as he looks around at his new creation, the New Acropolis Museum, after an eight-year campaign to get it designed and built.

The Swiss-born architect has been on a Greek odyssey to get the $177 million structure ready, visiting Athens frequently to balance demands of conservationists, planners and archaeologists.
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British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has visited Athens & whilst there visited the Acropolis. It is unclear whether any of the meetings he attended in Greece talked about the Elgin Marbles, but now that he has seen the Acropolis for himself, it will be interesting to see if this affects his opinion on the way that the government handles the issue of the reunification of the Elgin Marbles.

From:
Athens News Agency

05/27/2009
Miliband in Athens for talks

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, currently on an official visit to Greece, held talks with Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and then Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis on Tuesday. These covered a range of issues, including the Cyprus problem, Turkey’s European accession course, developments in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, climate change, and a missile launch test by North Korea.

In statements after meeting Bakoyannis, Miliband stressed the need for a solution to the Cyprus issue “by Cypriots and for Cypriots” and said that Britain was determined to play only a supportive role in the vitally important negotiations underway, which had to make progress within the next few months.
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More coverage in Turkey of their Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s planned attendance at the opening of the New Acropolis Museum in June. Turkey has in the past also requested the return of numerous items held in the British Museum, so in many ways this is an area of common ground & belief for both countries.

From:
Today’s Zaman

Erdoğan, Davutoğlu to visit Greece
26 May 2009, Tuesday
MUSA TAŞPINAR ANKARA

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will attend the inauguration ceremony of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, which will take place on June 20, sources from the Prime Ministry said yesterday. Erdoğan is expected to have bilateral talks with his Greek counterpart, Costas Karamanlis, while in the Greek capital, the same sources noted.

Also next month, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu will travel to the island of Corfu, Greece. Davutoğlu will participate in a two-day informal meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which will focus on the OSCE’s role and security in Europe on June 27-28.
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US Congressman Donald Payne has introduced a bill supporting the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens.

From:
Greek News Online

Community: Members of Congress Express Support for Greek Issues
Posted on Monday, May 25 @ 13:59:55 EDT by greek_news
Washington D.C., By Irene Zoupaniotis

Thirty four key Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 10 key U.S. Senators participated and briefed the delegates of the 25th Annual Cyprus and Hellenic Leadership Conference. Most of the members of Congress expressed strong support to the communities concerns on Cyprus, the Macedonian issue and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The list of the speakers included some of the most powerful congressional figures, suck as, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) who is the Senate Assistant Majority Leader, House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), European Subcommittee’s Chairman Congressman Robert Wexler, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chair, European Affairs Subcommittee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and others.
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This news is rather late, as the cuts to the opening budget were covered by some news sources many months ago. It seems only right that during a global economic downturn when governments have to make cutbacks across the board that such events have to be scaled back to a more manageable cost. In the end though, the opening event will come & go – it is the museum itself that will present the persuasive argument for years to come.

From:
Financial Times

Acropolis museum budget cut
By Kerin Hope in Athens
Published: May 23 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 23 2009 03:00

Greece has cut the €6m budget for the festivities to mark the June 20 opening of the new Acropolis museum by more than half as recession looms over its economy.

But a ticket to see the 2,500-year-old sculptures from the Parthenon and other temples on the Acropolis hill will cost just €1 this year – the same price as a journey on the subsidised Athens metro. By comparison a ticket for Paris’s Louvre costs €9, or €14 ($19.56, £12.34) to include temporary exhibitions, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum charges $20 (€14.20, £12.60).
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From the inception of its concept, the New Acropolis Museum was designed with the principal aim of providing the best possible home for the Parthenon Sculptures. As such it will present the most persuasive argument yet that it gives the best context for the display of the fragments currently held in the British Museum.

Because of the importance of the contextual argument, it is not possible to replicate the New Acropolis Museum somewhere else – even if the British wanted to, they could never create a space for the display of the Elgin Marbles that would equal the one in Athens.

From:
The Independent

Elgin Marbles question renewed as Athens museum opens
By Frank Partridge
Saturday, 23 May 2009

The long-overdue New Acropolis Museum is now scheduled to open in Athens on 20 June. However, the impact will be felt most acutely in Bloomsbury, central London, as one of Britain’s longest-running international disputes takes a potentially decisive turn.

Athens’ share of the marble sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon temple on Acropolis hill, the crowning achievement of classical Greece, now have a permanent home 300 metres below the original site. The glassy, angular new museum is daring and eye-catching in itself, but it’s the contents of the third and top floor – and the way they’re arranged – that will make the world sit up and take notice.
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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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