Greek treasures and global treasures

I only wish that many of those who exploded at my post on the Greek fires had read it in English. That’s not meant as a criticism. I can read modern Greek just about well enough when I need to, but given the chance to read an English translation I’d always take it. So I can hardly object to others relying on the account of my views on the Ethnos website.

The trouble is that it was a bit of a travesty of what I actually wrote. For the record, I’m NOT advocating that the Greek heritage should be distributed wholesale abroad for “safe-keeping”. I am simply arguing – as I’ll explain a bit more after the jump – that there is something to be said for some dispersal and replication. Part of the reason is an entirely practical one: its the ‘Wills-and-Harry-never-in-the-same-plane’ sort of principle.

And for those of you who thought that I was being decidedly insensitive - to say the least -  in even raising these issues at a time like this (“to make such ill comments/suggestions at the time of national crisis in Greece, it just shows the type of person that you are”), please note that I did start the post with an explicit apology for just that - and, for good measure, with a sombre reflection on the hundreds of Ottoman women and children killed when the Parthenon went up in smoke in the seventeenth century.

Now that I have the link, let me say that you can find details of how to give to the disaster fund by clicking here  (in Greek), or consult Spyros Iakovidis’s most recent comment on the earlier post.

All the same, the intensity of  the responses took me aback a bit. It wasn’t just the abuse: “fuck!! of!!!!” as George put it, or “UP YOURS MY DEAR..”, in the  (slightly) friendlier words of another George. It was more the bigger debate about the role and preservation of cultural heritage revealed by many of these hard-hitting reactions.

Several of the comments raised the issue of the English Crown Jewels. How would I feel if some of them were sent to New York (as John M wondered)? Well, the true answer is that I would feel perfectly OK about it – and I half suspect that even now they’re not all in the Tower anyway (on the same ‘Wills-and-Harry' principle). To put it more positively, I actually feel pleased when I go (for example) to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and see those English country-house rooms, once in Oxfordshire or wherever, now reconstructed transatlantically. I like the idea that visitors, who come in from  the extraordinarily different world of Fifth Avenue, should find themselves reminded of “my” culture.

The other side of this coin is that I cannot agree with the idea that works of art have some necessary and natural "home". Nor do I think that those who now live in the place where ancient masterpieces were created (whether they are the direct ethnic descendants of the creators or not) are the only people in the world who could possibly be qualified to care for them or to speak on their behalf. So I find it hard to respond to Anon’s question:  WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT OUR HERITAGE? (whatever ‘right’ means in this context). And I could not agree that only modern Greeks can properly look after ancient Greek antiquities. That's a claim which would not be be true for the antiquities of any country in the planet - Greece, the UK, the Sudan, India, you name it.

I can think of few worse strategies of cultural planning – particularly for a globalized world - than one which demands that all works of art stay in the geographical area in which they were made. That's partly for reasons of safety, but partly too for the worthy aim of cultural interaction.

Now hang on before you reach for the ‘send’ button. I know that there are crucial issues of power and politics here. While I fully support Neil MacGregor’s view of a Universal Museum, it hasn’t escaped my notice that so-called “Universal Museums” tend to exist in Western Europe and the US – not in Ghana or Burkina Faso. Which is to say that the Universal Museum and imperialism have been, historically, at some level connected. It is also clear that it is easier for a country that has been a net ‘gainer’ rather than a net ‘loser’ out of these processes to feel culturally 'generous'. It's clear too that some objects are more singular and symbolically important than others (sending the Eiffel Tower to Australia would be quite different from sending, say, Monet's Waterlilies). All the same, the basic principle of sharing seems a good one.

It still is tricky with material monuments though. And that's partly the problem of their materiality itself. We can all “own” Shakespeare or Mozart or Seferis. The claims of Stratford upon Avon do not affect the possibility of sharing the bard's plays as widely as you like. Plays and poems and operas are infinitely extendable,  unlike marble -- which really is destroyed by fire, despite the optimistic assurances of Alex (in the comments) to the contrary. How we can share physically monuments which are ideologically shared by the whole world is a problem we haven’t yet begun to resolve. (I talk about this whole question in a bit more detail in my book on the Parthenon.)

But meanwhile, my earlier post was mostly about wondering what had happened to the other monuments in the Peloponnese. Fred Bullock's comment gave a bit more information But if anyone has any more, please let us know.

Comments

[Paschalis]

Dear Mrs. Beard,

I want to talk about this part of the text:
"The other side of this coin is that I cannot agree with the idea that works of art have some necessary and natural "home". Nor do I think that those who now live in the place where ancient masterpieces were created (whether they are the direct ethnic descendants of the creators or not) are the only people in the world who could possibly be qualified to care for them or to speak on their behalf."

I think if someone is to apply pure logic at a notion like patriotism or considering the worth of an art piece to someone by the distance of their birthplace to one's birthplace, it may seem or flat out be stupid. But worth is not always something that can be calculated by logic alone. Especially when it comes to art, desires play a major role. And when we talk about desires or "caring for" something, you can throw logic out of the window but we have to discuss it anyway so here goes.

For someone who asks for understanding that you are qualified to care for ancient greek works of art, you seem to do little effort to understand that others might care about them just enough to justify having them in close proximity.

Let's start with an extreme example of a love letter with a poem in it. The poem might be great art which would delight many people but it is obvious that it's worth a lot more to the person it was intended for compared to any other person in the world. When we go down the line, the author of the letter and the recipient might die but wouldn't you agree that it is to be expected for their grandchildren and their children to want to keep the original letter for themselves and to become angry when someone takes it away without permission? Is it so far-fetched to consider ancient art of being something like a family heirloom on a greater scale?

Could it be that pieces of art don't have a natural "home" but they have a "family"?

Even if we don't agree on this, I feel sorry for most of the comments you have received on your last entry. Although I want to believe that it is the vocal minority being stupid, I never ceases to amaze me how many Greeks can't understand that looking down on people robs them of any chance of being superior. I don't understand why I feel the need to apologize for them, here you have senseless patriotism again...

[anthony alcock]

As a life-long Republican I couldn't care less about the Crown Jewels. A "sense of pride" is unfortunately at the root of the problem. I'm not proud of being British. I'm happy being British, and frankly I've never felt more British than I have in the last twenty-odd years, because I haven't lived there in the last twenty-odd years.

[A]

Dear Professor,
It is very nice for you to be pleased every time you see some object of your country being exposed abroad. But you see, every time I go to a museum outside Greece and I see Greek antiquities I usually cry. First time I cried when I went to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, the same happened when I visited the British Museum. I don’t know if the reason was the excitement of seeing “alive” the object of art that I had only seen in my history books in school or it was the strange feeling of seeing something “greek” outside Greece. I know art has no nationality and belongs to all humanity but yet every time I go abroad it feels like seeing my grandmother’s objects in another person’s house and not in my own (if it makes sense).
Once I was traveling to Spain and on the plane I met a Spanish couple going back to their country after a short visit in Greece. I asked them if they liked my country and what they liked the most. Obviously they said that they liked “the food, the good weather and Acropolis”. And then their next question stroke me: “Where all the classic Greek statues have gone? You have nothing!” I remained speechless. I know that most of them were destroyed during the early years of Christianism but what about those that are saved and are exposed in Paris, Berlin, London, Venice and so on…
I am very sorry of all the rude and inappropriate comments that you have received, trigged from your previous post. But you see, we are a very small nation and it seems that everybody has taken something from us, leaving us with very little. What we are left with is pride for our ancestors, strong spirit and sadness for what is lost. I don’t want to justify all the bad comments you received but you see, you touched a very sensitive topic for all Greeks, taken into consideration that you are British and the issue of the Parthenon marbles is still open.
I felt ashamed when the flames reached Olympia, ashamed as Greek and as citizen of the world. But on the other hand Olympia is not just the marbles that got black from the fire. Olympia is the idea of “honorable competition” and even if it is flame-beaten it will always be so. The same as Parthenon, even naked without its statues it is still symbolizes democracy (to me at least). And I am very sorry but I don’t believe that ‘Wills-and-Harry-never-in-the-same-plane’ sort of principle can be applied when it comes to ideas.

[John M]

It's a matter of opinion whether ancient objects have some necessary or "natural" home or not. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

I think for most objects, the location is irrelevant, as long as they have been studied, are accessible, and are kept reasonably safely.

However there is a small number of objects which have transcended their academic or artistic value and, with time, have become national symbols. Some of them are: the Crown Jewels (I'm sure that, contrary to Mary, most British people with a sense of pride would be against the idea of them leaving the Tower of London), the original document of the American Declaration of Independence, and the Parthenon Marbles.

It is a matter of social anthropology and psychology to explain the process of how these objects are transformed into a national symbol but, in the end of the day, if most people treat an object as such, then it is. My fellow countrymen are somewhat traumatised by the loss of the Parthenon Marbles (schizophrenically, even the Orthodox Christians, whose church made enormous efforts to destroy classical antiquity) so they are over-sensitive with any general mention of moving other antiquities abroad. Combine that with the modern Greek love of conspiracy theories and the constant belief that there are "foreign forces against us" (which in some occasions has a basis but is usually exaggerated), add the high emotions caused by the fire tragedy in the Peloponnese, the writer's relatively high profile in matters of antiquity, and a Greek newspaper slightly mistranslating the blog post (but not too much) and you have the perfect recipe for mass hysteria.

As a security risk analyst by profession, I agree to the Wills-and-Harry-never-in-the-same-plane principle. However, to avoid controversy at that emotional time, the idea could have been rephrased to "let's disperse more antiquities to different museums throughout Greece" and not necessarily mention taking them abroad. The chance of a meteorite destroying all of the country's museums simultaneously is extremely low, and even if it did happen, antiquities would be the last thing we'd worry about.

[Federico Gamberini]

ON CONSERVING THE PAST
There is a lot to be said for reuniting disoparate parts of the same monument or work of art in its place of origin.
But the insoluble existential question is: how much should we remember the past (for our purposes, Antiquity) at all? What we have now is already the result of a process of selection, both deliberate and accidental. If we had less, we would have to base our knowledge on that, and if we had even less, we'd have to manage with that.
The fact is that never -or very rarely- can you separate the good things of antiquity from the bad, and every time we engage with antiquity we do but perpetuate it, just as this post does simply by meditating on it. So as well as an urge to preserve, there is also one to destroy and rebuild.
A predicament as anguished as that of life itself -though some may not be affected by it. Blessed are they who, free from the shackles of the past, can live in the present and future and create something new -or have have only selected a few, purified classic lines on which base their creations.

[Tony Francis]

Is there a difference between reproduction dinosaurs and reproductions of ancient Greek and Egyptian art? There are dozens of sites selling reproductions of ancient art. One is:
http://www.ancienttreasures.com/
People will pay to see a reproduction of a dinosaur skeleton. But does this carry over into ancient art pieces? Would people pay to see a reproduction? It seems these would be a good way to let many over the world see our mutual "heritage". And if a reproduction is lost, it is a few hundred dollars. How do you feel about this?

[anthony alcock]

"Heritage" has well and truly been transformed from an abstract word to a concrete one with serious commercial implications. A variety of fetishism, in fact.
It is instructive to compare the relatively sedate attitude of the Egyptians to, for example, the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin. Every so often there is a sort of semi-official outrage that this artifact is not in the Cairo Museum, to which it might attract even more tourists, but generally speaking the outrage seems to dissolve in the good humour for which I have always admired the Egyptians.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

About blogs in translation. My own experience with blog posts translated into Chinese and then translated back into English, a facility now available, is that the translated English version bears a precarious relation to the original post. I should like to think that the Chinese version is more accurate.

[Xjy]

All of this is really prefigured in the discussions triggered by the Germans on aesthetics in a changing world (whether they were aware of the change or not). From Winkelmann and Lessing through Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Hegel to Marx, Lukacs, Brecht, and most notably perhaps Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). What with the genre boundaries "erased" by the Romantic movement, and the effect on "authenticity" and "uniqueness" of the reproducibility of words and images.

Who owns what is what a lot of it boils down to. And there's an awful lot to discuss when it comes to what we mean by "who" and "what" - let alone "owns". Muggle or goblin ownership, for instance?? Does a purchaser have a permanent claim (through inheritance) on an artefact, or merely a temporary use-right (during a lifetime, say) after which the rights revert to the maker? How do you "own" something infinitely and instantly reproducible (like a software implementation of something)? By killing everyone who claims competing ownership rights or infringes claimed rights by poaching use? Clapping them in jail?

Who decides the "utility value" of a desirable good? What is the difference between a national treasure and a human being (in terms of slavery, nationality, freedom of movement, inviolability of certain innate rights, etc).

What validity does a value set by a market have in a different jurisdiction? Can a national monument be valued in this way or alienated by way of trade?

What is the difference between a poem I have in my head, and a statuette I can carry in my pocket? I mean, is "my" "Shall I compare thee..." or "Ozymandias" worth as much, or as authentic, etc, as (say) Laurence Olivier's? Or as a good German translation?

Is a work of art I can incorporate into myself and share without any material intermediary really different in essence from one that is physically alien to me, even if I can share it in situ? What about collective works of art, like plays and operas? How do things like films fit in? Is any ritualized assembly a work of art malgre soi - like a parliamentary debate or a demo, or a war, or a traffic concourse?

So many questions raised here. Is destructibility by fire an artistic criterion? Insurability? Suability?

And how free of history are the claims of place Mary brings up? Stratford is less authentic than London for Willy, but what about Salzburg and Vienna for Wolfgang? Is a working 18th century theatre a la Drottningholm in Stockholm more authentic than a purpose-built modern opera-house, even if it is in Prague??

What should rule here - principle or pragmatism? Mind or money? Theory or theft? Ideal or material?

[Richard]

Prof. Beard might have fended off some of the more hysterical criticism by pointing to the comments she made about the Parthenon Marbles in a previous post here:

Personally, as a Hellenophile Brit., rather conflicted about the question what to do with the Parthenon materials in the British Museum, about five minutes from where I write, I would be overjoyed to swap the Crown Jewels for the marbles - but I don't blame supporters of the return to Greece if they would decline the suggestion!