Ghost of a flea

Elgin Marbles

The British Museum may be negotiating with Greek authorities over the Elgin Marbles:

The museum has confirmed it had talked with the Greeks about lending the marbles, despite repeatedly stating they would remain in Britain.

In Athens, work has started on a $74 million Acropolis Museum, which has been designed specifically to exhibit the marbles. Under the proposed deal, the exhibition space might formally be designated an annexe of the British Museum.

The BM now "categorically" denies it is in any such talks. This earlier Flea-post has some Elgin Marble-related links. I am not a fan of the Elgin Marbles as I have never understood the attraction of classical Greek sculpture. Many others are less cretinous than the Flea, see something I do not and and have made this stuff the top attraction at the BM after the Rosetta Stone.

Let us be clear about this: if the Marbles are sent to Greece on loan it will be the last the British Museum sees of them. My knee-jerk reaction is opposed to the "return" of the Marbles. But then I have not read Christopher Hitchens' book on the subject. A reviewer writes:

As Hitchens makes manifestly clear, most of the arguments against restoring the marbles are incredibly weak. First, restoring the marbles is a unique act, not necessarily a precedent. Furthermore, the importance of the Parthenon and Greek culture in a shared Western Heritage means restoring them would be an act of restoring our own background and history. Elgin may have helped save some of the marbles; certainly leaving them in the Parthenon would have exposed them to the toxic pollution of Greece. But so long as the marbles are returned to Greece and placed in a climate-controlled museum until the Athenian air is cleared, what possible objection can there be? And given the history of these sculptures, the fact they were designed by Phidias to be part of the Parthenon argues strongly that they should be viewed in situ. They're a tangible link to the golden era of Pericles, and should be viewed in the temple he was responsible for building.

If this rebuts weak arguments against restoring the Marbles I see no strong argument in favour. Nobody is suggesting they should be viewed in situ but rather nearer-situ in the form of another museum space (the author of this review moves from one location to another in one sentence to the next). Revisionist history may see Elgin's purchase of the Marbles as an expression of crypto-colonial arrogance. In fact, if not for European collectors the statues would have been used for lime, the fate of much of the rest of the Parthenon facility. It is a bit rich for the apparatchiks of contemporary tourism industries to claim a romantic attachment to objects whose value is derived soley from that which was placed upon them by British antiquarians of yester-year.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at August 4, 2003 08:22 AM