The New Acropolis Museum has gained huge amounts of press coverage – in part because of its inextricable linkage with the issue of the Elgin Marbles. As one of the worlds leading architects is building next to one of the worlds most famous structures though, it is not surprising that the architectural press is also interested in the project.

From:
Architectural Record

Tschumi-Designed Acropolis Museum Opens At Last
June 2, 2009
By David Dillon

The New Acropolis Museum, Bernard Tschumi’s minimalist counterpoint to one of the world’s great archaeological sites, officially opens June 20, eight years after he won an international competition to design it, and three decades after the idea for a new Acropolis museum first surfaced.

“The design was chosen for its simple, clear, and beautiful solution that is in accord with the beauty and classical simplicity of the museum’s unique exhibits,” says professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the private organization overseeing the project. The original Acropolis museum, completed in 1873, will reopen as a gallery.
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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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The New Acropolis Museum is due to open next month, which will be a significant event, both within the world of museums, but also for the campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures.

From:
Live PR

THE NEW AKROPOLIS MUSEUM-SET TO OPEN ON JUNE 20 AMID HIGH EXPECTATIONS!
16.05.2009 11:08:18 The New Akropolis Museum, at the foot of The Akropolis at Athens, is all set to open for public display completely on June 20, 2009, according to the Culture Minister of Greece, Mr. Antonis Samaras.

(live-PR.com) – Athens, March 30, 2009 – The New Akropolis Museum, which was opened in stages during early 2008, is all set to enthrall the visitors and public. The construction work which started on Nov 2004 has been completed and, after many postponements, it is due to open on 20th June 2009. The overall budget for the Museum’s construction was 130 million euro, including the cost of expropriations. The new museum which replaces the existing Akropolis museum will exhibit approximately 4.000 artifacts and is definitely going to be the new landmark that will be added to the city of Athens.
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Gradually more information is becoming available on the nature of the opening events planned for the New Acropolis Museum. Various dignitaries visiting Greece have also already been given a preview of the site.

From:
Agence France Presse

Acropolis museum to open in June: minister
26-04-09

ATHENS (AFP) — The ultra-modern Acropolis museum, situated below the ancient landmark that defines the Greek capital Athens, will belatedly open in June, Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said Sunday.

“We are preparing a jewel of a museum whose opening on June 20 will be a major, global event,” said Samaras after giving European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso a guided tour of the venue.
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This article looks at the effects that the New Acropolis Museum will have on the area surrounding it – & why some Athenians are pleased with it while others are not.

From:
Financial Times

Acropolis now
By Kerin Hope
Published: April 18 2009 01:10 | Last updated: April 18 2009 01:10

Lights blaze after dark in the glass-and-concrete galleries of the new museum at the foot of the Acropolis hill as curators work overtime to prepare for its long-awaited opening on June 20.

Architect Bernard Tschumi’s pared-down rectangular block, with a top-floor space for the Parthenon frieze that mirrors the dimensions and orientation of the famous classical temple, is already an Athens landmark. About 1m tourists are expected to pass through its doors every year but the Swiss-born Tschumi and his Greek associate Michael Photiadis are keen for the new Acropolis museum to attract local residents too. Along with an unparalleled collection of ancient sculpture, it offers cafés with a spectacular view, a bookshop, an auditorium and space for temporary exhibitions.
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The New Acropolis Museum is designed specifically for the purpose of presenting an unparalleled collection of ancient artefacts – some of which unfortunately will not be there when it opens.

From:
Arch Innovations

The New Acropolis Museum, Designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects
Tuesday, 07 April 2009

The historic masterpieces of the New Acropolis Museum—from the archaeological remains of ancient Athens left visible beneath the building to the glorious Parthenon frieze installed at the top— will be displayed in total for the first time when the Museum celebrates its much-anticipated official opening on Saturday, June 20, 2009.

Designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects of New York/Paris with Michael Photiadis of Athens as local associate architect, the Museum has presented a number of temporary exhibitions in a lower-floor gallery over the past year. With the official opening, visitors will at last view the full suite of galleries, presented in a dramatic architectural experience designed explicitly for this collection.
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More feedback from the talk given at the Royal Institute of British Architects on the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Building Design

Bernard Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum
12 December 2008
By Stephen Phillips

Bernard Tschumi presented his New Acropolis Museum at the RIBA last week, and took Greece’s bid to win back the Elgin Marbles to the next level.

In the early eighties, I covered the Elgin Marbles story for Channel 4 News. Actress Melina Mercouri was Greece’s culture minister, and we filmed her touring the British Museum to inspect “her” treasures, under the guidance of its then director, David Wilson. He played a courteous, stiff upper-lipped straight bat, while she deployed all the emotive powers of a tragic actress. It made good television. There was no meeting of minds. Nonetheless, her eighties offensive made an impact, persuading at least one party leader, Neil Kinnock, to declare for their return.
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Coverage of the talk at RIBA on the New Acropolis Museum. Almost everyone who has seen it is impressed by the museum itself – will this be enough to make the British Museum enter into serious negotiations with Greece on the Marbles?

From:
The Guardian

The New Acropolis Museum: A home fit for the Elgin Marbles?
The soon-to-open museum for the Acropolis sculptures looks fantastic. But will it convince the British Museum to send the Parthenon frieze home?

Last night the president, Dimitrios Pandermalis, and the architect, Bernard Tschumi, of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens were in London to present their plans for the building, which opens sometime in early spring. They gave a clear sense of this impressive-looking museum, which is built in the shadow of the Parthenon atop ruins of late-antique buildings (which can be perceived through the glass floors of the museum’s ground floor). The plan echoes that of the Acropolis itself – the visitor will ascend through the building as if climbing the steep slopes of the hill, passing through halls filled with sculpture from the archaic temple to Athene, before reaching the very apex, where the Parthenon sculptures themselves will be displayed in a large glass-walled hall from which visitors will be able to enjoy wonderful views of Pheidias’s great temple.
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The New Acropolis Museum in Athens once opened may provide the strongest argument yet for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
Financial Times

A manifesto for the Parthenon Marbles
By Peter Aspden
Published: November 29 2008 00:30 | Last updated: November 29 2008 00:30

It stands like a giant modernist spaceship that has belly-flopped by curious accident opposite one of the most important cultural sites on the planet. Polemics and controversy have been hard-wired into its being. It has taken decades in the planning, years in the realisation, and an extra few months beyond its intended inauguration in the fine-tuning. But, finally, the new Acropolis Museum (left), fresh home to the extraordinary artistic legacy of ancient Athens, is ready to open its doors to the public.

Next spring, visitors will set foot inside Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi’s glass-and-concrete edifice, all sharp edges and skewed angles, and address for themselves one of the the most intractable cultural disputes of modern times. When they travel to the museum’s top floor, they will see marble panels from the famous frieze that used to encircle the Parthenon, the symbol of Athenian democracy that stands like a staid, elderly relative, looking wearily across at the upstart building from its incomparable vantage point on top of the Acropolis a few hundred metres away.
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Bernard Tschumi, one of the two designers of the New Acropolis Museum (along with Michael Photiadis) is to give a talk this coming Tuesday at the RIBA in London on the New Acropolis Museum. Tickets must be booked in advance as space is limited. There is also a second talk for students on the morning of the day after.

From:
Hellenic Foundation for Culture

New Acropolis Museum: The London Preview
Events organized by the HFC in UK and
the Royal Institute of British Architects
2 & 3 December 2008, Jarvis Hall – RIBA,
London

The Hellenic Foundation for Culture and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) present the London preview of the New Acropolis Museum, scheduled to open in Spring 2009, on 2 & 3 December 2008, at RIBA’s Jarvis Hall in London. The events are organized under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture with the support of the Organisation for Construction of the New Acropolis Museum.
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The New Acropolis Museum represents Greece’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
CNN

New Acropolis Museum ready for Marbles
By Eleni Gage
29 October 2008

It’s an incongruous sight: a super-modern, glass-walled building set at the foot of the ancient Acropolis.

But while the New Acropolis Museum, designed by New York-based architect Bernard Tschumi, may appear to defy Athens’s great history, it is, in fact, the city’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim its cultural patrimony: built to hold archaeological finds spanning 2,500 years, including the absent Elgin Marbles (portions of the Parthenon frieze), which the Greek government has been trying to recover from the British Museum since the mid 1800s.
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The Parthenon Gallery is in every sense the high point of a visit to the New Acropolis Museum. Even journalists who have initially been against the whole concept of the museum have come away awed by its creation of a suitable space for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
The Times

August 28, 2008
Athens welcomes the ghost of Phidias to new rooftop gallery
Marcus Binney, Architecture Correspondent

The new rooftop gallery built to display the Parthenon marbles is one of the most beautiful exhibition spaces in modern architecture.

Just as the Parthenon itself enjoys a 360-degree panorama of sparkling sea and green hills, the new ¤130 million gallery has a continuous view over the rooftops of Athens, interrupted only by the Acropolis itself. Sunlight fills the gallery through floor-to-ceiling glass, and the windows have such slender supports you might be standing in the open air enjoying blue skies and the crystal light which is the wonder of Attica.
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