In this interview, Bernard Tschumi makes it very clear that he believes that the Elgin Marbles will return to Athens, stating that the return will make sense to everyone once they see the facilities created within the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Wallpaper

Bernard Tschumi Q&A exclusive
Architecture
8 August 2008

After nearly 30 years of planning, and eight years since the international competition was launched for the project, the New Acropolis Museum in Athens is ready: the collections are carefully being moved in as we speak, and the official opening is expected with much anticipation towards the end of the year.

Proudly headed by architect Bernard Tschumi, the new museum project team also comprises local architect Michael Photiadis and the museum’s director Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, who showed us around the new bright and airy building, where we had the chance to meet Swiss-born Tschumi, and discuss his concept, the design, Athens and the Parthenon sculptures.
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When the New Acropolis Museum was being designed, the artefacts within it were considered as the factor that would define its eventual form. In this respect, the building is an anti-Bilbao – the form of the building is generated from the function, rater than a form being defined with the function them examined to see how it can fit within.

From:
Spero News

A vision for the new Acropolis Museum
The museum at the Acropolis is no mere shell. According to architect Michael Photiadis it was designed from “the inside out” to highlight the artifacts over architectural considerations.
Friday, August 01, 2008
By Danylo Hawaleshka
Article Tools

It somehow seems fitting that a museum built to showcase the architectural legacy of a temple honouring the warrior goddess Athena should itself be the outcome of numerous battles, some as yet unresolved.

For instance, Greek authorities required not one but four bare-knuckled design competitions – the first held more than 30 years ago – before deciding architects Bernard Tschumi of New York and Athens-based Michael Photiadis would bear the responsibility of creating the New Acropolis Museum.
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The British Museum is running out of time in which to return the Elgin Marbles before the New Acropolis Museum highlights the missing pieces for the whole world to see.

From:
Bloomberg News

Acropolis Museum Awaits Missing Body Parts, Held in London
By A. Craig Copetas
July 28 (Bloomberg)

At Athens’s New Acropolis Museum, the most popular exhibit is in London.

That absent art would be what the Greeks label the Parthenon Marbles, the British brand the Elgin Marbles and what the sculptor Greg Wyatt reckons are history’s most important and fought-over examples of priceless classical sculpture.
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The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is due to open imminently. Unfortunately though, there is still no sign of its star exhibits being there for the opening.

From:
Guardian

Acropolis now
Athens’s new museum is spectacular, even without its star exhibits. Kevin Rushby gets a sneak preview
Kevin Rushby, The Guardian, Saturday July 26 2008

Walking through bright sunshine and crowds of tourists in an Athenian street, I glanced down and read the publicity blurb in my hand. The story was there, contained in just a few words: “Museum mission: to house all the surviving antiquities from the Acropolis within a single museum of international stature.” Actually the entire story is distilled into one word: ALL. But they might have added that it has been a 207-year mission to return the so-called Elgin Marbles – the first being cut down from the Parthenon on July 31, 1801.

A little further up the road and both buildings are in sight: to my right, rising from a skirt of trees, is the knobbly hill of the Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon; to my left, behind some low buildings, is the New Acropolis Museum. The international stature of the Parthenon requires no words, but does this new museum live up to the lofty ambition? And the big question: does it have the requisite stature even when ALL the antiquities are not present – because half of them are in London?
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After much speculation & various conflicting reports, it now appears in the New Acropolis Museum, the copies of the British Museum’s Parthenon Sculptures will be displayed with a whiter colour than the authentic sculptures that they sit amongst. There is a certain irony in this of course, harking back to the cleaning controversy of the 1930s. Maybe once the actual sculptures are returned, they will still look much whiter.

This article is also notes that the museum is now scheduled to open in September of this year.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Parthenon frieze will be recreated in New Acropolis museum
Originals to be displayed next to plaster casts of British Museum’s marbles
Martin Bailey | 10.7.08 | Issue 193

LONDON. The long-awaited formal opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens has now been scheduled for September, after a series of delays. The gallery housing the Parthenon marbles, at the top of the museum, with a view towards the actual Parthenon 300m away, will be finally unveiled, although many of the other displays are not expected to be completed until next year.

After years of discussions, the museum has now decided how it will present the marbles. The originals are being displayed alongside plaster casts of the pieces removed from Greece, most of which are in the British Museum in London.
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The opening of the New Acropolis Museum later this year will represent one of the most significant events in the museums world for some time – not necessarily because of the building’s facilities, but because of what it will stand for. The question remains though over whether the British Museum will acknowledge this fact & allow the Elgin Marbles to be reunited in their rightful home.

From:
The Sunday Times

From The Sunday Times
July 6, 2008
The new Greek Acropolis Museum
The Acropolis will this year have a museum fit for Greece’s greatest treasure, the Elgin Marbles
Mark Hodson

A new museum will open in Athens later this year. No big deal, you might think. You’d be wrong. The New Acropolis Museum is not merely a dazzling piece of modernist architecture, but the latest gambit in a 200-year campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles.

The museum, which has been 30 years in the planning and has cost the Greek government more than £100m, will at last provide a permanent home for the greatest treasures of the classical period, safe from the city’s corrosive, polluted air.
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After visiting Athens, Mary Beard has concluded that the spaces within the New Acropolis Museum are very impressive & live up to all expectations. She is still not convinced however about how well the outside sits with the rest of the city. Personally, I think that in a few years, people will get used to its look & learn to appreciate it as part of the city.

From:
The Times blogs

June 30, 2008
The New Acropolis Museum is good . . .

. . . from the inside at least. I’m not so sure about the outside.

I’ve been in Athens for a few days and the main purpose was to see round the New Acropolis Museum, nearly finished and with a few sculptures already installed. My expectations were a bit muted, and I’d read rather too much about the whole thing being a mausoleum for the missing Elgin Marbles.

Actually it was, in all sorts of ways, a very nice surprise. The top floor where the Parthenon Marbles are to be displayed worked especially well – looking directly at the temple on the Acropolis itself and, as the jargon goes, having “a conversation” with it (though one of my Greek friends did mutter darkly about it being a rather one-sided conversation).
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A follow-up article to Malcolm Brabant’s broadcast about the New Acropolis Museum. The museum has been & in the minds of many people, always will be controversial, due to its proximity to one of the worlds most iconic archaeological sites. Once the building opens however, many perceptions will change & evolve as people finally get a chance to experience the building themselves.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 01:05 GMT, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 02:05 UK
New home for Greece’s holy grail
By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, in Athens

The Acropolis Museum is now just months away from entering service in Greece’s struggle with its most implacable cultural adversary.

Its priceless treasures lie in marble halls, hidden from view in giant removal boxes.
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BBC reporter Malcolm Brabant has been shown round the New Acropolis Museum in Athens & reports on its progress & how it will act as a powerful argument for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

You can watch the broadcast online here.

Bernard Tschumi, the designer of the New Acropolis Museum speaks about some of the key points of the design of this building.

Form:
Greece Now

Museum with a view
New Acropolis Museum architect Bernard Tschumi speaks to Greece Now about his Parthenon ‘glass house’

Swiss theorist, teacher and architect Bernard Tschumi believes in building spaces that make events happen. As the winner of the New Acropolis Museum contract, this philosophy of his will be put to the ultimate test. And though the Parthenon marbles’ return to Greece from the British Museum amidst 2004 Olympic fanfare is not guaranteed, there is an entire floor in Tschumi’s contract-winning plan for the disputed 160-metre frieze.

The winning design (created with Greek architect Mihalis Fotiades) was among 12 projects invited to compete by the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum. After three fruitless competitions (two Greek, one international) held for the museum since 1976, construction is finally set to begin by the end of the summer.
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A new exhibition, titled Marbles Reunited aims to demonstrate how much is gained if the surviving Parthenon Sculptures are reunited in one place, rather than fragmented between different museums.

From:
BBC News

Monday, 27 January, 2003, 14:11 GMT
Science reunites Elgin Marbles

A virtual reality exhibition showing how the Elgin Marbles would look if they were reunited goes on display at the Houses of Parliament on Monday.

The latest technology is being used to simulate how the 5th Century BC sculptures will appear if they are reunited with the rest of the Parthenon Marbles in Athens.
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Greece is proceeding with the construction of a new museum to house the Parthenon Sculptures, despite the fact that the British Museum is showing now signs of relenting in their attempts to keep the contested artefacts in their collection.

From:
United Press International

The Art World: Pesky Parthenon marbles
By FREDERICK M. WINSHIP
From the Life & Mind Desk
Published 12/19/2002 11:50 AM

NEW YORK, Dec. 19 (UPI) — Greece is blithely going ahead with the construction of a new $87 million Acropolis Museum in Athens centered on a huge exhibition hall for the display of the Parthenon marbles, most of which are owned by the British Museum and not likely to leave London at any time in the near future.

Not since the late actress Melina Mercouri was Greece’s famously nagging culture minister has the British Museum been under such pressure to surrender possession of the so-called Elgin Marbles, brought to England by British diplomat Lord Elgin to insure their safety during the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Turks. The British Museum bought the collection of sculptures from Elgin in 1816.
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