The initial history of the Elgin Marbles in this article is over-charitable to Lord Elgin (who had for instance never visited Athens at the time that he instructed the removal of the sculptures from the Parthenon to start). The key point to consider though is that no precedent would necessarily be set by the reunification of the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens. It has long been understood that in cases such as this, each case is assessed on its own strengths & weaknesses. No two restitution cases are identical. Not only do you have to consider how artefacts were acquired, but also the significance of the artefacts, their uniqueness, what they represent etc before any decision can be made. In the case of the Parthenon Marbles, there is a strong case, not least because they are fragmented parts of a whole. If the pages of a book were spread randomly between different locations, few would be able to argue that this was the best way that the book could be displayed.

Further to the whole argument of precedent though (which has been gone over many times by many people), surely doing an arguably right act now should not be stopped because you fear that doing what is morally right once may mean that you are then encouraged to make similar commitments again in the future?

From:
Dawn.com (Pakistan)

The debate over the Elgin marbles
By Irfan Husain
Wednesday, 22 Jul, 2009 | 08:48 AM PST

Ever since the end of the colonial era, countries whose cultural heritage was looted by European powers have been demanding the return of their treasures. And yet decades later, these priceless objects continue to fill the display areas of hundreds of museums, private collections and auction houses in the West.

Perhaps the longest outstanding claim has been for the return of the Elgin marbles from the British Museum to their home in Greece. This stunning collection was removed from its resting place in the Parthenon in Athens. Built 2,500 years ago on the Acropolis as a temple to honour the goddess Athena, the Parthenon served as a church for another thousand years before being converted into a mosque by the conquering Ottoman Turks who turned Greece into a province of their far-flung empire. It then fell into disuse and was a dilapidated ruin when Lord Elgin arrived in Constantinople as the British ambassador in the late 18th century.
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Christopher Hitchens has written a 4 page piece in Vanity Fair about the Parthenon Marbles & the reasons why he believes that they belong in Greece. Unlike many recent pieces though, although it is prompted by the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it goes far deeper into the argument, looking at many aspects of it rather than purely focussing on this most recent development.

From:
Vanity Fair

Acropolis Now
The Lovely Stones
Among the first to visit Greece’s new Acropolis Museum, devoted to the Parthenon and other temples, the author reviews the origins of a gloriously “right” structure (part of a fifth-century-b.c. stimulus plan) and the continuing outrage that half its façade is still in London.
By Christopher Hitchens July 2009

The great classicist A. W. Lawrence (illegitimate younger brother of the even more famously illegitimate T.E. “of Arabia”) once remarked of the Parthenon that it is “the one building in the world which may be assessed as absolutely right.” I was considering this thought the other day as I stood on top of the temple with Maria Ioannidou, the dedicated director of the Acropolis Restoration Service, and watched the workshop that lay below and around me. Everywhere there were craftsmen and -women, toiling to get the Parthenon and its sister temples ready for viewing by the public this summer. There was the occasional whine of a drill and groan of a crane, but otherwise this was the quietest construction site I have ever seen—or, rather, heard. Putting the rightest, or most right, building to rights means that the workers must use marble from a quarry in the same mountain as the original one, that they must employ old-fashioned chisels to carve, along with traditional brushes and twigs, and that they must study and replicate the ancient Lego-like marble joints with which the master builders of antiquity made it all fit miraculously together.
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Kwame Opoku responds to the piece published earlier this month by Alastair Bruce – the great great great grandson of Lord Elgin.

From:
Afrikanet

Datum: 24.01.09 17:12
Kategorie: Kultur-Kunst
Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku
Response to the great great great grandson of Lord Elgin

Alastair Bruce may have a filial duty in respect of the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles and no one can criticise him for that. (http://www.sharonwaxman.com) After all, we are not responsible for the deeds or misdeeds of our ancestors. What he should really not expect from the rest of us is to buy the argument that his Great Great Great Grandfather, Lord Elgin, “wanted to preserve them from the destruction they faced, at a time when war and local indifference was grinding away at the edifice.” This is a baseless argument which has been used by all those who have taken illegally or in a questionable manner, the cultural objects of others. It is an extremely weak argument which does not gain credibility by being repeated often. Who preserved these objects before his Great Great Great Grandfather ever set foot in Athens?
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One of Lord Elgin’s descendants has written this short piece about the Marbles. He seems to stick to the post-rationalised agenda of his ancestor, that the sculptures were only removed for their own preservation, before reverting to the often repeated argument that return can’t happen because it would set a precedent.

Setting aside whether or not a precedent would be set, I continue to find it disturbing that the fact that one might have to do the right thing again in the future is used as a feeble justification for not doing the right thing today – if something needs to be done, it needs to be done – if you keep hanging onto this reasoning, everything else will end up going back first, before the precedent argument is abandoned to be replaced by some other equally spurious one.

From:
Sky News

MPs Pushing Elgin’s Marbles Back To Greece
Alastair Bruce
January 8, 2009 11:29 PM

Two MPs championing the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece this year, to mark the opening of a new museum at the ancient Acropolis in Athens, have sent letters out this week to all their fellow legislators recruiting Parliamentary support.

My interest in this is because the marbles were brought back to Britain from Athens by my Great Great Great Grandfather, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, at the start of the 19th century. He was passionate about antiquities and wanted to preserve them from the destruction they faced, at a time when war and local indifference was grinding away at the edifice.
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Greek Culture Minster, Evangelos Venizelos, has issued a statement, clarifying what Greece is & isn’t asking to be returned – and that the requests against the British Museum only include the sculptures from the Parthenon, despite assertions from the museums that this would be the tip of the iceberg, leading to more artefacts returning afterwards.

From:
New York Times

December 13, 2002
Greece Affirms Limits to Elgin Marbles Claim
By CELESTINE BOHLEN

Greece’s case for the return of the so-called Elgin Marbles — fragments of the Parthenon frieze now housed in the British Museum — has nothing to do with claims for the repatriation of other cultural assets, Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek culture minister, said yesterday.

He was responding to a recent statement signed by 18 museum directors representing most of the major museums of the United States and Europe (except those in Britain and most of those in Italy). The statement affirmed the museums’ right to hold on to artworks that have long been in their collections.
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