Continuing my coverage of the loan of a Parthenon sculpture to Russia by the British Museum, here are some of the articles that express support for this move.

They range from the incorrect and naive (Dominic Selwood). Does anyone really believe that if the Greeks did what the British Museum asked then the marbles would return just like that? Firstly, there is the question of why they should endorse an assertion that they fundamentally believe is untrue. But, there is also the suspicion that when dealing with the British Museum, you are pressured to relinquish some of your position, yet end up getting nothing in return. Mr Selwood also seems to be forgetting how badly his point of view is out of synch with public opinion – as evidenced by the catastrophically low levels of endorsement of his arguments in a recent Prospect Magazine poll.

Next come the barking mad – in this instance represented by London’s mayor Borris Johnson, who has regularly in the past chosen to express how much he loves the marbles being in the British Museum, purely for his own benefit so that he can visit them more easily.

Finally there is the the indignant – incredulous querying of why the Greeks do not support this move in the same way as the British museum does, followed by tales of how they should be proud of it rather than complaining. Fairly predictably, this argument is represented its creator, Neil MacGregor. I’m sure that in the days when Britain had an empire, that this approach of telling people to feel thankful might have worked. Those days are long since gone though and countries and their peoples are more than capable of forming their own opinions on topics, without needing to take into account the instructions of those who believe the viewpoint they hold is somehow superior.

Looking at the source of the bulk of these articles, it could almost be argued though, that they are all merely manifestations of the Daily Telegraph viewpoint – that the Marbles must stay, so therefore any argument that backs this is therefore a valid one.

Part of the Parthenon Marbles, the British Museum plans to loan the river-god Ilissos to the Hermitage in St Petersburg

From:
Daily Telegraph

The Greeks can have the Elgin Marbles any time they like – if they play by the rules
The decision to lend a piece of the Elgin Marbles to Russia has nothing to do with Greece’s absurd campaign for their return
By Dominic Selwood
3:47PM GMT 05 Dec 2014

Today, everyone should be celebrating, including the Greeks. The Trustees of the British Museum have lent Russia’s stupendous State Hermitage Museum the statue of Ilissos, one of the jewels of the Parthenon sculptures. It is a new chapter in the history of these amazing sculptures, and one that underscores the promotion of education, culture, and understanding that the British Museum has always undertaken with its collections. Now citizens of Russia can also experience the wonder of this exquisite ancient art. This is a great day for Britain, Russia, and Greece.

The decision to lend the sculptures to Russia should not be seen as having anything to do with Greece’s claims over them. Despite the ongoing barrage of emotive complaints from supporters of the repatriation of the sculptures to Greece, the fact is that there is nothing that puts the British Museum’s Parthenon sculptures into a special heritage category. World museums routinely hold and exhibit artefacts from other countries. It is what they are there for, and is at the heart of their educational purpose. Stolen or illegitimate antiquities are required to be returned. Legitimate acquisitions can remain. No one seriously doubts that the Parthenon sculptures are the legal possession of the British Museum.
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More coverage of the comments made by some of the stars of the film Monuments Men, on the return of the Parthenon Sculptures.

George Clooney & Bill Murray

From:
Independent

George Clooney hits back at claims he does not understand Britain’s right to Elgin Marbles
Star responds to criticism at press conference to promote his latest film ‘The Monuments Men’
Ian Johnston
Tuesday 11 February 2014

George Clooney has hit back at suggestions that he does not understand Britain’s right to the Elgin Marbles because he is an American, as the row between Hollywood and Westminster escalated with Matt Damon and Bill Murray also weighing in.

On Saturday at a press conference in Berlin to promote his new film The Monuments Men, Clooney said he thought the marble sculptures taken from the Parthenon in Athens by the Earl of Elgin in the 19th century should be returned to Greece after a question from a Greek journalist.

That prompted John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, to tell The Independent on Sunday that Clooney might not know about the UK’s “legal entitlement” to the priceless artefacts partly because “he’s an American”.
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As the case of the Banksy artwork removed from the wall in Wood Green continues, more & more people are trying to draw slightly absurd parallels to the Parthenon Marbles & calling for the British Ministry of Culture to intervene to block the auction from taking place. However in this case, I can’t really understand quite what the basis for the arguments is.

It now seems clear that the owner of the building (of which the wall on which the graffiti was on was a part) authorised & presumably organised the removal of the artwork. No doubt they stand to make a reasonable profit from it. Now, Banksy picks the walls he paints on – with no consultation with the owners, so this lucky owner is soon going to be wealthier than they were before – and it is entirely through luck.

Haringey Council are claiming that the art is something that enriched the area & was in part something that belonged to the people. It is unclear how they can make this judgement, though, when much of their time is spent cleaning graffiti (that is typically of much poorer quality) off walls. There is no body which decides what is graffiti & what is street art – and that one must be scrubbed off & one preserved, so there argument does not really carry much weight.

It would be great if the work could have stayed – but that is just my own personal opinion – nothing more. Just because you don’t like what is happening, it doesn’t mean that the law should suddenly intervene (without any clear legal framework under which to do so).

Comparisons to the Parthenon Marbles are far more ridiculous – street art by its nature is a transient thing – even with protection, paint will flake off in a few years, leading it to fade away. The sale is being made legally (despite the fact that many people are upset by it).

From:
Artinfo

February 20, 2013, 6:25 pm
London’s Stolen Banksy Heads to the Auction Block Despite 11th Hour English Rescue Attempt

Part of the inherent definition of street art is that it is, by nature, public. It appears on the sides of buildings and on sidewalks, in doorways and on concrete blocks. It most often appears in urban neighborhoods, and tends to lend itself to some sort of social commentary. The illicit nature of the craft is in itself subversive and, as a corollary, non-commercial. Or it was anyway.

In recent years, street art has become gritty-chic, touted by the likes of Kate Moss, and therefore increasingly popular as a collecting category. Original works by Banksy, probably the most important street artist of the last twenty years, now fetch six figures at auction. It was only a matter of time before people started ripping down walls to, quite literally, extract the value from them.
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More coverage of the results of Monday’s debate on the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, organised by Intelligence Squared.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Stephen Fry calls for Britain to return Parthenon Frieze to Greece
Stephen Fry said that the classical Greek sculptures, which reside in the British Museum, should be returned to “a country in dire need”.
By Florence Waters
10:51AM BST 12 Jun 2012

The actor has said that restoring the marbles, which rank among the greatest treasures in British Museum’s collection, would be the ultimate show of “friendship” to a country in crisis – and would send out the right message to the rest of the world.

The Parthenon Frieze, part of a wider collection of classical sculptures called the Elgin Marbles, has resided in Britain since the early 19th century when they were brought over to Britain by explorer Lord Elgin.
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The British Museum regularly makes much of the fact that the Elgin Marbles in their collection can be seen free of charge – but never enters into a debate about whether this is really to everyone’s benefit or not. The admission to the Acropolis Museum for instance is set at a level that it is easily affordable to most, yet this is somehow automatically seen by the British Museum as a bad thing.

Brian Sewell is not someone who is generally seen as a friend of the campaign for reunification of the Parthenon Marbles looked in previous articles at what the price of free admission to museums is – and whether resources could be better utilised across the culture sector if charges were introduced.

He now looks further, at whether some deaccessioning should be allowed. Traditionally, the UK has had very strict laws in this regard compared to the US, but there are arguments for allowing museums to refine their collections & reduce the cost of storing worthless artefacts.

From:
Evening Standard

It’s time to sacrifice some sacred cows
By Brian Sewell
09.12.10

The great (but not necessarily good) artists who put themselves forward as spokesmen for their profession have this year been very loud in their objection to cuts in state funding for themselves, for galleries, museums and all other institutions of the “creative industries” in which their work is exhibited. To these august orators and signatories of open letters in the press, their art is a sacred cow never to be fed short rations, never to be slaughtered; to others, however, they — and never mind their art — are fat cats in feather beds, or pigs with snouts in troughs, and short rations must be borne by them as well as by the rest of us.

Both views have some merit but neither represents the truth. Those of us who hold the middle view see the nation’s crisis as one from which the arts must not be exempt — we cannot go on fiddling while Rome burns — but must survive it in a fitter state than now. Heaven-sent may not be quite the suitable term, but the crisis has brought us an unexpected opportunity for radical revision of the way we run and fund the arts and we should take advantage of it to think what has hitherto been quite unthinkable.
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The British Museum regularly props up its defence for the retention of the Elgin Marbles with the fact that the sculptures can be seen in their museum free of charge, without any real debate a to whether this is necessarily a universally good thing. As budgets for government spending are cut in the UK, more & more questions must be asked about whether these institutions should keep their free admission, or charge visitors (which doesn’t necessarily need to be a large amount).

From:
Evening Standard

British Museum reduces opening hours as budget cuts begin to bite
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent
30.09.10

The British Museum is to reduce its opening hours from January to cope with government budget cuts.

Late-night opening to the permanent collections will be axed on Thursdays and restricted to one evening a week — Fridays. Staff recruitment will be “significantly reduced”.
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As was speculated at the time of the law being passed, the Benevento Missal will be the first item to be officially returned under the Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Act.

The points made originally about this particular return in relation to the law that allows it still stand. There is no evidence that the Missal was looted by the Nazis, or had any connection to the Holocaust. The law however allows its return, because of the time period in which it was removed from Italy. This highlights the piecemeal legislation implemented (when it is politically advantageous to do so) opening up holes in the anti-deaccessioning rules that govern the UK’s largest museums. The Human Tissue act before it opened up similar holes. The fact that holes need to be opened up for so-called special cases highlights the need for a full review of the legislation to cover all artefacts in museums in the UK, that they can be returned from collections when necessary.

From:
BBC News

15 September 2010 Last updated at 16:55
British Library returns manuscript looted during WWII

A 12th Century manuscript which was housed in the British Library is to be returned to Italy because it was looted during World War II.

The 290-page Beneventan Missal was taken from the Metropolitan Chapter of the Cathedral City of Benevento, Naples, in 1943.
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Iran’s renewed irritation with the UK over the successive delays to the proposed loan of the Cyrus Cylinder is showing no sign of abating, as they continue to press ahead with plans to cease cooperation on other cultural issues. It is worth noting again, that Iran in the past has cooperated extensively with the British Museum – not least in the loan of artefacts to them for their recent Shah Abbas exhibition.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Iran threatens to sever links with UK in row over Cyrus Cylinder
By Heidi Blake
Published: 4:15PM GMT 21 Jan 2010

Iran has threatened to cut cultural ties with the UK after the British Museum refused to hand over a 23cm clay cylinder inscribed by Cyrus the Great, the Persian king.

The museum had promised to lend Iran the cylinder, thought to be inscribed with the first declaration of human rights, after borrowing several key works form Iranian museums for its exhibition on Shah Abbas, the Iranian emperor, last year.
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News stories on Athens’s New Acropolis Museum continue. Now that the opening event has passed though, more thought is given to the actual purpose of this building & how well suited it is to this task.

Most journalists who have seen the building are in favour of return – even many of those who previously regarded it as a bad idea.

From:
Evening Standard (London)

Life & Style
Now let’s return the Elgin Marbles
Rowan Moore
24.06.09

After 33 years the Acropolis Museum in Athens is finally open — and it’s enough to make a London patriot reconsider the case for giving the Greeks back their history…

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, may have been a chancer and cheat but by ripping sculptures from the Parthenon he helped save one of the world’s great art treasures for posterity. By bringing them to Britain he also helped put Greek art at the centre of world attention, at a time when Athens was a little-visited backwater.
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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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The British Museum is trying to make the Lewis Chessmen the central feature of a new gallery, in the hope that this will weaken the argument for their return to Scotland.

From:
Evening Standard (London)

Your move … Scots want chess set back
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent
25.03.09

THE BRITISH Museum has put a set of elaborately carved chess figures at the heart of a new gallery despite demands that they be returned to Scotland.

The 82 Lewis Chessmen, which are between 800 and 900 years old and made from walrus and whale ivory, were seen in a Harry Potter film and inspired the children’s TV series Noggin The Nog.
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In a change from looking at current news articles, I have come across two interesting pieces about the Parthenon Marbles from the New York Times in 1890.

If you skim over the rather sycophantic writing style used in the articles, there are a number of interesting aspects to these pieces – firstly, most of the arguments then are exactly the same as they are now – & are answered just as clearly then as they are now.

Interestingly, the two papers in the UK pressing for the return of the marbles were the London Standard (now the Evening Standard) & the Daily Telegraph – two of the papers that are now generally seen as opposing restitution.

Finally, the argument at that time seems in many ways more admirable than it is now – there was no consideration that anything should be asked for in return, & it was suggested that Britain ought to bear any costs of the return – that they were the ones to be doing the honourable thing, rather than getting bogged down in negotiations & exchanges.

The fact that similar argument for return were being used over one hundred years ago ought to finally convince those people who suggest that the clamours for the restitution of the marbles is only a recent phenomenon (with the implication being that if they ignore it then it will go away again).

Read scans of the original articles by following the links below.

New York Times, 21st December 1890

New York Times, 29th December 1890