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June 25, 2009

A body in London, with its feet in Athens

Posted at 8:51 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum

The Parthenon Marbles are not all in one country. They are not even neatly split between countries. As visitors to the New Acropolis Museum will discover, in many places a single piece of sculpture is split arbitrarily (by how it happened to break when it fell from the building at some point in the past). Is there any way that people can argue that this makes sense? If you had a book & the pages of the story were split between two locations, how many people would try to argue that maintaining this status quo rather than reunifying the fragments of the story was the best thing to do?

From:
Global Post

A breast in London, a foot in Athens
New Acropolis museum puts marble dispute in stark relief.
By Nicole Itano – GlobalPost
Published: June 25, 2009 06:46 ET

ATHENS, Greece — Inside the new Parthenon Gallery, atop Athens’ new Acropolis Museum, streaming sunlight illuminates one of the glories of ancient Greece. The goddess Athena, wrought in marble, leaps from her father Zeus’ head, while white horses gallop across the walls.

These are the Parthenon Marbles as they haven’t been seen in more than two centuries. In the black-glass gallery, which sits in the shadow of the Acropolis with the Parthenon in full view, the sculptures are laid out in order, as they would once have been seen on the famous building itself.
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