A common excuse given by supporters of retaining the Parthenon Sculptures in the UK, is that the time is not right for them to return. The New Acropolis Museum opened during the middle of one of the worst financial crises to affect the world in recent years & for some, their words carried some weight. Surely now though, when Greece is re-issuing government bonds & the remnants of the years of riots are being repaired, this is the ideal time to rebuild Greece’s culture, by righting a historic wrong?

Acropolis Museum in Athens

From:
Bloomberg News

Athens Lacking Only Elgin as Windows Erase Crisis: Cities
By Marcus Bensasson and Nikos Chrysoloras Apr 24, 2014 5:27 AM GMT

The marble paving stones have been relaid in Athens’s Syntagma Square, the site of pitched battles between police and protesters during the worst of Greece’s economic crisis.

Yannis Stournaras has replaced his sixth-floor window overlooking the square. It was pierced by an errant bullet during one of the riots in 2010.
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The New Acropolis Museum is unusual for a Greek state owned museum – in that it keeps the money it receives from ticket sales & its shop etc – and uses these funds to entirely finance its running costs, ensuring that it does not at present require any aid from the cash starved Greek state.

You can find out more about this from this video on Bloomberg news.

In part, Greece’s financial crisis is connected to the huge size of the country’s state sector – many departments that in other countries are private operations receive large government subsidies. However, the New Acropolis Museum, whilst it is run by the Greek government, is managed independently – and surprisingly (to many) successfully. Perhaps other departments should take more note of the example it sets.

Perhaps more could also be made of this, when the British Museum re-iterates its regular point that the Elgin Marbles are seen there free of charge. Certainly, the museum is free to visit, but it is heavily funded by money from British tax payers – something that is starting to look increasingly problematic as all government spending in the UK is cut back.

From:
Bloomberg

Economic Lessons From the Greek Acropolis
By Marc Champion Apr 30, 2012 5:18 PM GMT

Greece is in the state it’s in because the government had its fingers in industries long since privatized elsewhere; it spent and borrowed recklessly; it failed to collect taxes; and it couldn’t pay when the music stopped on the global economy.

So you’d think the new Acropolis Museum, a project of great national pride that opened in 2009 as the crisis struck, would be in dire straits as the government cuts back under orders from its international creditors. Not so, because the museum takes zero funds from the state to fund its operations.
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Nobody watching news in recent years can have managed to avoid hearing about the Greek debt crisis. Much of the focus has been on the level of the debt & how it can be re-paid, but the effects on real people living in the country can be far more of a problem. Cuts in the budgets of government departments have meant that the level of spending on archaeological & cultural projects has had to be heavily reduced from what it was a few years ago. Solutions need to be found, not just to the macro level problem, but to the many smaller issues that both stem from it & in some cases help to perpetuate it.

From:
Bloomberg News

Greece’s $473 Billion Debt Mirrors Crisis in Cultural Assets
By A. Craig Copetas – Oct 19, 2011 12:00 AM GMT
Plato doesn’t live here anymore.

A pack of feral cats chases the rodents that run past the Gypsy squatters who inhabit the bleak 32-acre Athens park that masks the birthplace of Western civilization. Alexandros Stanas says what’s interred beneath the debris illustrates both a solution to Greece’s 345 billion euro ($473 billion) sovereign debt crisis and why his country roils in catastrophe.

“Economics, politics, philosophy, everything that empowers our reasoning and ability to solve today’s problems was born here at Plato’s Academy,” says Stanas, a former management consultant at the Greek Ministry of Culture and Tourism who is now general director of the Art-Athina International Contemporary Art Fair.
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A team of divers, led by archaeologist Demetris Kourkoumelis have organised new excavations of the remains of the ship, the Mentor, which was lost in a storm off Kythera whilst transporting many of the Parthenon Sculptures to London. The sculptures were subsequently recovered by sponge divers from Kalymnos.

From:
Bloomberg News

Team Explores 19th Century Parthenon Marble Shipwreck in Greece
By Natalie Weeks – Aug 8, 2011 1:40 PM GMT

A team of underwater explorers in Greece examined the shipwreck of the Mentor, which sunk in 1802 as it transported marbles from the Parthenon to London.

The sculptures, part of the Parthenon collection taken and sent to England by Lord Elgin, were recovered after the ship sunk and no additional pieces were found in last month’s or in three previous explorations, the Athens-based Culture and Tourism Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today.
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Once again, Egypt has reiterated its request for the return of the Nefertiti bust, currently housed in Berlin’s Neues Museum.

From:
Bloomberg

Egypt Demands Return of Nefertiti Bust From Germany
By Mahmoud Kassem – Jan 24, 2011 11:40 AM GMT

Egypt has officially asked that Germany hand over a 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti from Berlin’s Neues Museum as part of the North African country’s efforts to return disputed artifacts.

Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, sent a letter requesting the return of the statue to Herman Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the Egyptian Culture Ministry said in an e-mailed statement.
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Contrary to other recent reports, it appears that there is still doubt about whether the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran will be extended for three months as requested.

From:
Tehran Times

Monday, January 10, 2011
Cyrus Cylinder show extension not confirmed
Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN — The National Museum of Iran (NMI) curator said on Wednesday that so far, the report on the extension of the showcase for the Cyrus Cylinder in Tehran has not been officially approved.

Bloomberg and several other foreign websites published a report on Wednesday announcing that the British Museum has agreed to extend its loan of the artifact for three more months in response to a request by Iranian authorities.
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Following requests from Iran, the British Museum has agreed to extend the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder for a further three months.

From:
Bloomberg News

Iran to Keep British Museum’s Cyrus Cylinder Three More Months
By Farah Nayeri – Jan 4, 2011 6:55 PM GMT

The British Museum said it will prolong its loan to Iran of an ancient artifact for three more months, meeting a request by the Iranian authorities.

The Cyrus Cylinder, which went on show at the National Museum of Iran in September and was due back Jan. 16, will stay in Tehran until April 15 — after late March celebrations of the Iranian New Year (Norouz), the museum’s press office said in an e-mailed statement.
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Further coverage of the reports in The Times that Greece has agreed to set aside claims of ownership, in it’s attempts to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens.

From:
Bloomberg News

Greece Offers to Forgo Claim to Ownership of Elgin Marbles, Times Reports
By Chris Peterson – Dec 6, 2010 8:08 AM GMT

Greece offered to end the long- running dispute with Britain over the Elgin Marbles by saying it would forgo its claim in return for a long-term loan of the artefacts, once a frieze on the Parthenon, the London-based Times reported, citing Greek Culture Minister Pavlos Yeroulanos.

The frieze was removed in 1801 by British diplomat Lord Elgin with the permission of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled Greece, and shipped to London after parliament agreed to buy them. Greece regards them as having been looted, the newspaper said.
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After resorting to numerous ways to increase pressure on Yale University, it now looks as though Peru’s attempts to secure the return of artefacts may have been successful. It is worth bearing in mind though that agreements such as this can fall though for man reasons. Previously Yale agreed to return the same artefacts in 2007, but this never went ahead and the reasons given tend to vary depending on which side you speak to.

From:
Bloomberg News

Yale to Return Incan Artifacts Taken a Century Ago, Peru’s President Says
By John Quigley – Nov 20, 2010 5:15 PM GMT

Yale University, the third-oldest U.S. college, has agreed to return Incan artifacts taken from Peru a century ago, President Alan Garcia said.

Ernesto Zedillo, a Yale professor and a former Mexican president, promised yesterday to return the artifacts, which were excavated by archaeologist and Yale Professor Hiram Bingham from the Machu Picchu citadel in the southern Andes in 1912, Garcia said in statement dated yesterday and posted on the presidential website.
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The Metropolitan Museum in New York has agreed to recognise Egypt’s title to nineteen artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen. These artefacts will now be returned to Egypt after the current Tutankhamen exhibition in Times Square ends in January.

From:
Bloomberg News

Met Museum to Return Tutankhamen’s Bronze Dog, Sphinx, Egypt Council Says
By Digby Lidstone – Nov 10, 2010 12:04 PM GMT

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has agreed to repatriate a collection of ancient Egyptian objects including a lapis-lazuli sphinx that once adorned a bracelet worn by King Tutankhamen, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

Curators at the museum have established that all 19 antiquities, which also include a three-quarter-inch-high bronze dog, come from the tomb of the boy-pharaoh, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, according to an e-mailed statement. They are among a number of objects that were acquired by the Met after the deaths of Carter and Lord Carnarvon, the English earl who sponsored the expedition.
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At the conclusion of the conference in Egypt on the restitution of looted artefacts, Zahi Hawass re-iterated a point that he has made in the past, that Museums that he has the power to make life very difficult for institutions that refuse to co-operate to try & resolve cases involving disputed artefacts.

From:
Bloomberg News

Egypt’s Hawass Sees ‘Miserable Life’ for Museums With Relics
By Daniel Williams

April 8 (Bloomberg) — Egypt’s chief antiquities administrator wrapped up a two-day conference among countries that want valuable relics held abroad returned by threatening to make “life miserable” for museums that keep them.

“We will decide together what to do,” said Zahi Hawass, who heads the Supreme Council of Antiquities, at the end of the Cairo conference that attracted 16 delegates and nine observers from abroad. “We will make life miserable for museums that refuse to repatriate.”
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