ACROPOLIS NOW

ACROPOLIS NOW

How the British Museum might lose its marbles

LONDON — In the British Museum, about sixty protestors are dressed in blue. A giant glass roof casts a cold glow on the flags and picket signs below. People of all ages have gathered to demand the return of the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of 2,500-year-old sculptures from Athens. Bystanders turn their heads as cries of “Send them home!” echo throughout the cavernous space.

“They were illegally acquired, they were stolen from Greece, and they belong in the Parthenon,” declares Christopher, a zealous Greek national who has brought his entire family to the event. The dispute over the Parthenon Marbles (formerly Elgin Marbles) is far from new, but recent developments may pave the way for a resolution. This is how Greece lost its national treasures—and how it might get them back.

Ever since Lord Elgin ordered pieces of the Parthenon frieze to be hacked off and sent to Britain in 1801, there have been international cries of protestation. Denounced as an act of plunder, the expedition became a symbol of imperial greed and hubris. And with the birth of the independent Greek state, the Parthenon became a national emblem akin to Britain’s Big Ben. In 1983, the Greek government filed a formal request for the return of the marbles, and a movement for ‘reunification’ has been simmering ever since. All the while, these demands have fallen on deaf ears in London. But circumstances have changed.

Western institutions have increasingly come under pressure to confront their historical connections to colonialism and critically consider where displaced art belongs. This has inspired a movement for ‘museum decolonization,’ with the aim of repatriating spoils from the colonial era. French president Emmanuel Macron led the response in 2017, promising to return African art stolen during the colonial era. In the last year, the Musée du quai Branly and the Smithsonian have also returned the looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. Museums around the world are facing an identity crisis: to avoid being consigned to the dustbin of history, they will need to adopt a fresh approach.

The protest moves deeper into the British Museum, entering the Parthenon display gallery. “It disrespects the Greek nation, its people, and the symbol that is the Parthenon,” shouts one activist. The protest is peaceful but restless; many of the attendees are Greek and feel robbed of a deeply symbolic national treasure. Despite requests from international organizations like UNESCO, the museum has stubbornly refused to negotiate with Greece.

The British Museum is a time capsule. It houses 8 million objects spanning 2 million years of human history. Much of this collection was accrued at the height of the British Empire, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum now specializes in preserving and displaying these globally sourced artifacts, some of which were attained through violent means. But if its contents are relics from a bygone age, so too are its policies. Since 1963, an act of parliament has forbidden the British Museum from giving away its objects except under a few special conditions. This is by design.

Officials feared that repatriating even one object would be seen as an admission of guilt. In turn, countless countries would come knocking to confiscate the museum’s encyclopedic collection. And so the venerated British Museum would disappear in a tsunami of post-colonial vengeance—such was the reasoning of frightened politicians at the time. Shielded by the law, the museum trustees stuck a finger in each ear and sang triumphantly of ‘cultural achievement,’ as the Parthenon Marbles attracted hordes of visitors. But the clamor for change eventually grew too loud to ignore.

Amid a flurry of recent protests, the British Museum finally broke its silence this summer. Chairman George Osbourne conceded there is a ‘deal to be done’ with Greece over the marbles. Since then, officials have begun cautiously suggesting a ‘loan’ or ‘partnership’ with the Acropolis Museum in Greece. This language, however vague and unsatisfactory, marks a big shift from precedent. The sense of legal immunity seems to have crumbled as the museum directors now feel obliged to address criticism. With these announcements, a new optimism has taken hold that the Parthenon Marbles may finally return to their Athenian home.

At the protest, organized by the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), I interview bestselling Anglo-Greek author Victoria Hislop. “When I grew up, the map was all pink. Everything in pink was British,” she muses. “Our mentality has changed enormously since the beginning of the twentieth century. We don’t learn about the British Empire as if it was a good thing anymore.” Hislop describes a cultural shift from below, with a younger generation rejecting the long-held attitudes of their parents. In Britain, what was once a source of pride has become a source of shame: a recent Sunday Times poll found that 78% of readers would have the marbles returned to Greece. As public opinion has grown to reject colonial heritage, there’s been a clear change of mood.

I glance back up at the Parthenon Marbles, extending hundreds of feet on either side of their lofty display hall. Legions of life-sized marble warriors on horseback charge bravely into battle. Scores of centaurs rear back on their hind legs, their sinews tensed in suspended motion. “Look around,” urges George, an activist for the BCRPM. “Every single sculpture in this room is part of one unified work of art. One half is here in the U.K., the other half is in Greece. They obviously belong together,” he reasons. I begin to notice missing pieces of the frieze—amputated hands, torsos, and heads. Blunt cuts starkly contrast the smooth sculptures, as if they’d been pried off in a rush. This scene begs the question: how did Greek antiquities end up in England in the first place?

Commissioned by General Pericles in 432 B.C., the Parthenon was a temple built to commemorate Athens’ victory against the invading Persian Empire. Its frieze was designed by legendary sculptor Phideas, adorning a vast religious and social space. As empires rose and fell around it, the Parthenon stood still over the Athens skyline for two millennia. By the time Lord Elgin arrived in Ottoman-ruled Greece in 1800, it had fallen into ruin.

As British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Elgin was a man of status. He wanted the marbles as decoration for his country house, and claimed to have received a firman (official permit) from Ottoman authorities to remove some of the ruins. (No evidence of this document has ever been found; it’s more likely he bribed Ottoman officials to turn a blind eye.) Thus, the marbles were hacked off with heavy tools and loaded into ships back to Britain. When one transport ship wrecked in the Aegean Sea, it took divers three years to recover the sunken marbles. Meanwhile the expedition grew unpopular at home, and British poet Lord Byron called it an act of vandalism in his poem “Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage.” The now desperate and financially ruined Lord Elgin sold the marbles to the government for £35,000—a fraction of his expense costs.

“What an inept individual,” grumbles Victoria Hislop. She argues that Elgin’s expedition was a moral and logistical disaster from start to finish. But the problems continued under the British Museum’s stewardship. In the 1930s, the rose-coloured marbles were ‘cleaned’ with an acid solution to give them a fake all-white look. This reflected anachronistic perceptions of classical sculpture, which wrongly assumed they were white. (We know in fact that Greco-Roman sculptures were colourfully painted.) Sadly, the ownership history of the Parthenon Marbles is defined by greed and incompetence. They really belong in Greece.

+++

In an ideal world, the British Museum would return the marbles outright. But negotiations

require compromise. The museum has made clear any deal will depend on an acknowledgement of its ownership. The word ‘loan’ will thus be central to any future agreement, a strategy that allows the trustees to spin the move as an act of charity. However patronizing this arrangement sounds, it may be the only way to get the marbles back to Greece. A few diplomatic solutions have been proposed.

Forever Loan Under this arrangement, UNESCO brokers a deal between the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum to “loan” the marbles. They are shipped back to Greece and reunited on display with the other sculptures in the Acropolis Museum. The length of the loan is unspecified, allowing the marbles to remain in Greece indefinitely. This ‘forever loan’ model has been successful in the past, like when the V&A museum ‘lent’ its Head of Eros sculpture to Turkey for an undisclosed amount of time. If this arrangement is still unpalatable to the trustees, the British Museum could create a remote campus to house the marbles in Athens. Of course, there’s a twisted irony to the U.K. loaning items Greece considers its own. But a loan is better than nothing, and once the marbles arrive in Greece, it’s unlikely they’ll ever come back.

Give-and-Take To incentivize a deal with the British Museum, Greece could offer something in return for the marbles. Greek officials have suggested a ‘rotating collection’ of priceless Greek antiquities in exchange. These could include the Mask of Agamemnon, a gold funerary mask from the Bronze Age, considered the Mona Lisa of antiquity. Artifacts such as these would be placed on temporary exhibit at the British Museum, allowing the museum to boast of new attractions never seen outside of Greece. This deal could be portrayed as a ‘partnership’ or a gesture of goodwill between the two countries. As with a loan, the irony of needing to reframe theft as an equal partnership is present. But it must be remembered that the British Museum trustees still hold the leverage, and may need to be coaxed into a deal.

Robot Sculptor If the Parthenon Marbles are returned, new technology can fill the void left behind in the British Museum. For years, the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) has offered to take 3D scans of the sculptures. These would be fed to a ‘robot sculptor,’ which uses chisels to carve precise replicas of the sculptures into massive chunks of marble. The robot reproduces the originals to an astonishing degree of accuracy, creating a product “orders of magnitude better” than the “low-quality plaster casts” of the past,

as the executive director of the IDA told the Guardian. These replicas would then adopt the place of the originals in the British Museum, indistinguishable to the naked eye—cutting-edge technology in its most literal sense.

Of course, the British Museum has been resistant to such proposals: “People come to see the real thing don’t they?” asks Jonathan Williams, deputy director of the museum. And he has a point. But that hasn’t stopped a few digital archaeologists from taking clandestine scans of the marbles with iPhone cameras. In fact, the robot sculptor is already hard at work, having already reproduced a horse’s head in its laboratory home in Italy. Though reproductions will never inspire the same awe as the originals, the British Museum has used copies many times before; it currently houses a life-size reconstruction of a Japanese teahouse and a replica Anglo-Saxon helmet. It’s not that far of a stretch to suggest the same for the marbles.

Augmented Reality One proposal by British actor Stephen Fry suggests augmented reality (AR) as an option for the British Museum. In addition to the replicas, AR glasses could superimpose a photorealistic 3D reconstruction of the Parthenon as it once stood. These glasses—much lighter and less intrusive than VR headsets—could be distributed at the entrance of the exhibit and taken off at will. The rendering would include the most up to date knowledge on the original structure, displaying its colourful paints and lost sculptures inferred from gaps in the metope. This could help correct historical misrepresentations and ensure the return of the marbles to Greece. If done right, such technologies present the British Museum with an opportunity to lead a technological revolution in museums. A combination of “loaning,” exchange, and technological innovation could be enough to push a deal over the line.

+++

Severed from one indivisible structure, the Parthenon Marbles are a unique case among contested artworks. These sculptures are not meant to be seen as individual artifacts, but as parts of one integrated design. Yet half of the sculptures are in Greece, the other half are in

the U.K.; they were torn asunder without rhyme or reason—heads and limbs hastily hacked off for sheer convenience. The frieze was not just a work of art, but an integral part of the temple’s architecture. Why simulate the Parthenon in a museum gallery in London, when the original structure still stands? It’s clear the sculptures are best appreciated as a complete set at the foot of the monument from whence they came.

The British Museum is at a turning point— the way it chooses to behave now will determine its path forward. Unlike the Benin Bronzes, the Parthenon Marbles were not acquired through direct violence; perhaps the actual spoils of war should be higher on the British Museum’s list of returns. Nonetheless, the marbles are a rare case of divided art. Reuniting them would be a watershed moment, forever shifting expectations of museums around the world. Countries like India and Egypt would feel emboldened to demand the return of other treasures from Europe.

But this won’t mark the end of museums— quite the contrary. I believe a smart approach to repatriation can save museums from forced obsolescence. To maintain their influence as centers of learning and culture, they must be sensitive to changing attitudes. If the British Museum fails to adapt, it may lose its prestige and become vilified by an iconoclastic younger generation. It would be far shrewder in the long term for museums to become agents of change, rather than opponents. For the first time, advances in 3D technology give the British Museum an elegant way out of the Parthenon Marbles dispute, and the chance to pave the way for museum modernization. And new diplomatic proposals can make a deal for repatriation very attractive for the British Museum and its trustees. We’re now closer to reuniting the marbles than we’ve ever been. As Pericles once said: “Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time.”

DAVID PINTO B’24 spends too long in museums.