Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Greece has lost its marbles...or were they stolen?
This New York Times article about a stolen vase (and this one, too ) reminded me of an earlier conversation we had here about the Elgin Marbles.
“We are talking about the Parthenon. We are talking about the greatest national symbol of Greece. What we are saying is that this masterpiece must be reunified and its integrity restored.”
-Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, 2000
“The British Museum says it cannot return the Marbles because its rules forbid it giving anything back.”
-The Guardian, 2001
Those interested in reading an article I wrote on the Marbles in 2002 should click on the word more below.
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Doing squats with Bruce Cutler
A regular in the Vertical Club weight room was one Bruce Cutler, the late John Gotti’s lawyer. The barrel chested Cutler was a popular figure in the trendy gym...not only for his weight-lifting prowess and dedication, but for his jocular and affected mannerisms. He’d never use a monosyllabic word when a longer, more captivating term could do the job so much better. For example, the gym was crowded and I was spotting a young woman on the bench press which involved me standing behind the bench and against a mirrored wall. Cutler and a training partner wanted to use the bench next. So, instead of asking if we had a lot more sets to do, he queried, “Are you deeply ensconced back there, sir?”
Bruce Cutler sez:: “To read the complete essay, please click here.”
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P.S. Here’s what to do if you ever come across a beached whale.
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Elgin Marbles (cont’d)
The Right of Return?
Britain, Greece, and the 200-year Battle Over the Parthenon Marbles
The subjugation of conquered cultures is one the hallmarks of colonialism and imperialism. From assigning new names to captured Africans during the slave trade to banning Kurds from speaking their language in contemporary Turkey, humans are often stripped of their identity in the name of facilitating occupation and oppression. In some cases of cultural hijacking, colonial powers commandeer the physical manifestations of their victims’ society. This is where the battle over the Elgin Marbles begins.
In 1799, when Greece was a colony of the vast Ottoman Empire, Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin (a.k.a. “Lord Elgin") was named England’s ambassador in Constantinople (now Istanbul) after serving as an envoy in Brussels and Berlin. According to journalist Jerome Monahan, upon seeing the Acropolis, “Elgin got permission to send artists to Greece to sketch and excavate in and around its many ancient sites.” One of those sites was the Parthenon (see sidebar). Sculpted between 447 and 438 BC, the Parthenon had survived conversion into a church, a mosque, and an arsenal. In 1687, the Venetian army laid siege upon the landmark and the resulting damage was extensive. More than 100 years later, Lord Elgin had his men remove whatever surviving sculptures they found but he wanted the Parthenon marbles for himself. “From the Acropolis,” Elgin wrote at the time, “I want to have samples of each cornice, each frieze, each column capital, of the roof decorations of the grooved pillars, of the various architectural orders of the metopes and in general, of anything, as much as possible.”
Despite such ambitious aims, Elgin was unable to afford the marbles and offered them to the British government. The sculptures, kept in a coal shed at Burlington House during this time, were “decaying from the destructive dampness,” Elgin admitted. After a debate in the House of Commons, Lord Elgin was paid £35,000 and in 1817, the 176-yard frieze-having acquired the sufficiently imperialist moniker “Elgin marbles"-went on display in the British Museum. Just 12 years later, Greece gained its independence from Turkey and the campaign for the return of the Marbles commenced. But it wasn’t until 1981, when Melina Mercouri was appointed Greek Minister of Culture, that the bring-back-the-Marbles movement hit full stride.
The British government has remained remarkably consistent throughout the campaign-sticking with three fundamental reasons for keeping the Marbles in their possession. The primary rationale is the issue of “setting a precedent.” England fears that returning the Marbles would lead to a flood of ancient artifacts heading homeward. Secondly, the argument goes, it was Lord Elgin who actually “saved” the Marbles in the first place. Finally, the British government maintains that the Marbles are accessible to more people in London and have become an irreplaceable part of that city’s culture.
It may be instructive to note how all three reasons relate to colonialism. An imperialist power does not want artifacts returned to the land of their creation, claims superiority in the ability to handle and display such treasures, and, ultimately, assimilates the artifacts as part of their own culture. “The marbles are not the only items to have come to Britain by dubious means,” Jerome Monahan said. “Bronzes were taken from Benin following a raid in 1897. Nigeria, where Benin is now located, wants them back.”
“We’re not talking about a painting like the Mona Lisa that can be hung on any wall,” said Elena Korka, an archaeologist advising the Greek Culture Ministry. “These marbles were sculpted for the Parthenon, designed to be on the Acropolis, under the natural light of the Attica sky, not a dimly lit gallery off Tottenham Court Road.” Korka insists such a return would not establish a precedent. “We don’t want to open a Pandora’s box,” she explained. “This is a one-off, unique campaign for a unique movement.
“The British Museum transcends national boundaries,” wrote museum director Robert Anserson in The Times of London. “The idea of cultural restitution is that anathema to this principle.”
Again, the key word is consistent.
Those seeking the return of the frieze, on the other hand, have questioned Lord Elgin’s authority to remove anything from Greece. They argue that the Turkish Sultan gave Elgin permission (a firman) to take away any sculptures that did not interfere with “the works of walls of the citadel” yet Elgin’s men caused a substantial part of the marble to give way and shatter into pieces during the removal.
“Lord Elgin did not have permission to cut sculptures from the structure of the Parthenon itself,” wrote student researcher Kate Holloway. “The firman stated that he could create casts of the sculptures and remove sculptures which had fallen to the ground, yet Elgin removed parts of the frieze and metopes by sawing them out of the building. There is also no proof today that the firman ever existed in written form. As a result, the authority that Lord Elgin received is legally a very gray area.” This might explain the British government’s initial trepidation toward purchasing the Marbles. During a debate, a member of Parliament, John Newport, declared that Elgin had “taken advantage of the most unjustifiable means” and committed “the most flagrant pillages.”
And then there’s the issue of who can best handle the frieze and where the Marbles might be best displayed. This sticking point was “utterly demolished,” says Dimitris Pandermalis, when the Greek government committed to building a museum to house the Marbles within sight of their old home on the Parthenon in Athens. “In politics, no is never not forever,” said Pandermalis, the head of the museum project. “They can say no, but international opinion is so strong that they will not be able to carry on saying it.”
The museum, projected to open in conjunction with 2004 Olympics, expects to draw 3 million visitors a year. It will be located at the foot of the Acropolis hill with windows or a roof designed so that the Marbles could be seen against the background of the Parthenon. “It makes the British Museum gallery look like a mausoleum,” Eleni Cubitt, head of the British committee for restitution of the Marbles, declared in mid-2001. Undeterred, a British Museum spokesman replied: “Nothing has changed. We believe the right place for the Parthenon marbles is in the British Museum.”
Hope for a compromise emerged in early 2002 when Mark Jones, director of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, stepped up. “There must be a possibility that something could now work for all parties,” said Jones. “I cannot tell another museum how to behave on this, but I do believe it is possible to develop partnerships. It can be good to display objects at different places.”
“Greece’s strongest backing may come from other European museums that have agreed to loan antiquities for the Games,” explained Anthee Carassava in The New York Times. “Last June, for example, the Pergemon Museum in Berlin agreed to send Greece 10 sections of the third century B.C. Phillipeion monument in exchange for an equal number of finds from the same site.”
Evangelos Venizelos is the Greek Minister of Culture. “I accept the possibility of a long-term loan,” he said. “Because, for me, the most important problem is the restitution of the Marbles.”
According to The New York Times, an official familiar with the proposal said it offered the British Museum “its pick of 32,000 statues and vases dating back to the fifth century B.C., close cooperation with the new Acropolis museum, and an engraved sign there stating that the British Museum is the sole owner of the marbles.”
Still, old differences remain.
“The British Museum has told me it doesn’t have confidence the Greeks can do all they have promised in terms of looking after the Marbles, but the museum could make a handover in time for the Olympics conditional on a new museum in Athens being built,” said British MP Richard Allan. But for many, this issue is much bigger than a British-Greek squabble or a two hundred year-old detective story to see who stole what. What is at stake here is art, culture, and a sense of history.
“The sculptures are an integral part of the structure of the Parthenon itself,” wrote Kate Holloway. “This structure is not only important to Greek heritage and culture but also to world culture, the Parthenon is the highest symbol of Classical Greek civilization. This civilization was the basis for democracy and influenced much of the modern world. Therefore the return of the Elgin Marbles is Great Britain’s obligation not to Greek cultural heritage but to the world cultural heritage.”
“Should no deal be reached,” Elena Korka summed up, “then a huge empty space will be left for the marbles to remind visitors of the British response.”
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
