The New Acropolis Museum is good . . .

. . . from the inside at least. I’m not so sure about the outside.

I’ve been in Athens for a few days and the main purpose was to see round the New Acropolis Museum, nearly finished and with a few sculptures already installed. My expectations were a bit muted, and I’d read rather too much about the whole thing being a mausoleum for the missing Elgin Marbles.

Actually it was, in all sorts of ways, a very nice surprise. The top floor where the Parthenon Marbles are to be displayed worked especially well –  looking directly at the temple on the Acropolis itself and, as the jargon goes, having “a conversation” with it (though one of my Greek friends did mutter darkly about it being a rather one-sided conversation).

It’s a great view and the frieze comes over very powerfully,  being on show at roughly the same height as the sections in the British Museum – but arranged as it was on the original building, not ‘inside out’ as in the Duveen Gallery.

They’re still trying to work out how best to display the metopes, and at what height.

Other good bits include the clever play of levels, throughout the museum. Not only do you move up through time, going through the archaic galleries on the middle floor to reach the classical Parthenon at the top. But there are also marvellous views through glass floors (right) to the excavations of Roman Athens underneath the Museum itself.

The middle galleries seem vast, with huge columns – and on the day we went some of the famous archaic sculpture was just being taken out of its packing cases, and unwrapped from its protective shrouds. It did seem though that the space was so big that the sculptures were going to end up looking very small. But then, I suppose they are quite small.

The only bit on the inside which didn’t seem at all worked out yet was the sculpture from the tiny temple of Athena Nike, which perched on the edge of the Acropolis. These deserve to have a lofty airy home in the Museum -- though it looked as if they were in danger of being pushed into one of the few dark corners the building had to offer.

The blot on the landscape was, I thought, the outside: distinguished enough in a hubristic kind of  architectural way, but wildly out of proportion to its surroundings, in a rather low rise area of Athens (hence the joke about it being a rather one-sided conversation). And it’s pretty brutal too, rather like a designer multi-storey car park.

The main controversy in Athens, though, is about two art deco houses, which stand between the new Museum and the Acropolis and are said to spoil the view. In fact the original architectural brief laid down that these houses were to stay and that any design should take account of them. Even so there is still a campaign to demolish them and rumours that that is what the architect Bernard Tschumi hoped for all along. And, of course, there is a counter campaign orchestrated by the musician Vangelis, who happens to own one of the offending houses.

Knowing about this fuss, I was surprised quite how unobtrusive these houses are. OK the backs  of the houses which you see from the Museum are a bit messy, but they fit in nicely with the cheerful amalgam that is modern Athens. And actually, Tschumi fulfilled his brief, and the houses really don’t impede the view f the temple.

So, given my generally positive reaction, did I think I should get off the fence about the return (or not) of the Elgin Marbles? Well, no . . . It’s going to be one of the world’s great museums, but for me the issue has never been about whether the sculpture was well looked after and displayed in Greece. So this doesn’t change the argument.

For me, it's going to be perfectly possible to love this wonderful new showcase for the Acropolis collection -- and still not be sure whether the Elgin marbles should be "repatriated".

Comments

[shana]

To me, restitution is not about nationalism in an egotist sense, it's about symbolic reparations in a postcolonial world. All this talk about Universal Museums, shared ownership, accessibility, and proper care sounds uplifting and inspiring. But it's a marketing spin.
As conservators know, proper care is a relative term--for one person, it means locking an object away forever in a controlled environment, for another, it means allowing the object to slowly dissolve in the rain and air. Who's to say that the Parthenon doesn't serve its social purpose most fully as an everyday reminder of Greek identity? By the way, no culture is continuous throughout history--don't deconstruct one identity and forget to deconstruct your own.
Accessibility is a laughable concept. What's the difference between flying to Athens and flying to London? None, really. Lots of stuff to see both places. And for those who don't have to fly to London, well, 60% of them said to give the marbles back, so what do they care?
Shared ownership. Here's an awfully democratic-sounding term that gets bandied about. It's a face-saving technique designed to depict art-poor looting nations as generous, benevolent figures who (only sort of) return important art to art-rich nations. Speaking of the art-rich and art-poor, that's a totally skewed dichotomy--what, art-poor nations have no art of their own? How entitled of them. Oh, look, it's Robin Hood come to steal from the rich and give to the poor! Honestly, what a ruse.
And the idea that restitution empties museums is ridiculous--NAGPRA has required US govt-funded museums to return ancestor remains and sacred objects to Native Americans for 18 years now, and yet US museums are plenty full. In fact, the relationships they establish during the restitution process have led to new donations from native groups.
Finally, we have this idea of the Universal Museum--straight out of the colonial past. Funny that they're all in the former colonial nations. The very concept is unsustainable without the "art-poor" taking objects from the "art-rich." What about each nation owning its own objects and forming a loan network?
I think that "art-rich" nations, such as Greece, will continue to oppose such universal museums and demand restitution until they can be assured sovereignty over their own stuff. Possessive individualism--the idea that identity is based in possessions--helps explain both why Greeks want the marbles so badly and why Britain doesn't want to return them. Restitution is symbolic of a redistribution of agency in a post-colonial world. "Art-rich" nations oppose universal museums and trade in heritage objects not because they're greedy and selfish, but because they have yet to be acquire the social, political, and/or economic power to determine themselves. Return the objects they desire and give them the chance to decide where the objects go. Redistribution of objects is redistribution of power.

[Richard]

As usual Lord Truth desperately overstates his case with his regular descent into self-parody... Poor, misunderstood Britain!

A couple of points: of course the Parthenon marbles are "works of art in their own right" in London, relating to their London context in the rather austere but (to me) attractive Duveen galleries. But the idea that it follows that "their origins are irrelevant" is nonsense: I have no doubt that the visitors to the present galleries would consider it highly relevant if it were shown, for example, that they were nineteenth century forgeries and nothing to do with Athens (there is no chance of this, of course; I just mean that the modern visitor in London is likely to feel that the Ancient Athens Thing is an important part of the experience). Indeed, the Museum positively encourages contextualisation in terms of the ancient Parthenon and its festivals, pushing the line (which is the most common interpretation, but not the only one) that the frieze depicts a procession in the Panathenaic festival, and providing lots of models, drawings etc. to show how the bits in London fitted on to the building.

And it seems to me silly to bring up the whole fact of the colouring of the sculptures in their original state as if this were an argument against bringing them back to Athens. By that logic, visiting the Parthenon itself on the Acropolis involves no relation to its origins either, since it is different from the fifth century Parthenon in all sorts of ways (lots missing, no roof, surrounded by modern, big industrial city rather than ancient and relatively small fifth century Athens, etc.). And, as has been pointed out, we are not looking through the same pagan eyes as the original visitors, who will anyway have differed in their attitudes one from another. In fact, people would of course relate them to their "origins" all the same: I think it would be rather a good thing to look from the sculptures in the museum across to the remains of the building, though I don't for this reason necessarily support giving the sculptures back...

People are not relating *either* to some sort of ancient real deal, directly ad fontes, *or* to a modern context and construct, but inevitably to a complex amalgam of both. And this inevitably applies to the Parthenon marbles, whether seen in the B.M. now, or (which I continue to find unlikely) in the new Acropolis Museum at some time in the future...

I don't think it's a very good explanation (at the very least it is a gross over-simplification) to suggest that anti-Britishness is the reason for the fetishization of the Parthenon marbles above and beyond all the other works of art with their origins in Greece but now distributed around the great museums of the world. It has much more to do with an obsessive emphasis on Athens in the middle of the fifth century BC as What Ancient Greece Is All About (and thus the most important aspect of modern Greece's perceived heritage): a complex classicising process which was already going on under the Roman empire...

But of course Lord Truth's apparent belief that the marbles question is All About Us makes a good mirror for the most unthoughtful Greek nationalist attitudes to the question.

All best,
Richard

[Lord Truth]

It was perhaps sensible for Beard to push off to Crete after writing her Acropolis Museum piece-that will stir up the usual hornets nest-lets get away and leave'em to it.But curiously there have been few comments...perhaps connected with what follows..

One thing that Beards piece and photos make obvious is that there is now a clear and decisive answer that the British Museum can give to the 'Return the Marbles'business and I will present it here to hopefully bring an end to this nonsense.

First the basic situation.
The return the marbles business has nothing to do with stealing ,the Parthenon,beauty or historical relevance-despite a few swipes from some clever arses like Byron.It is simply about hate.It is part of the strange remorseless war against the British that has been going on since the British staged a comeback in the sixties.Despite the horrors of the present-and I accept there are plenty-no one could have imagined that London and Britain would still be major players on the worlds stage as has happened.
This has spawned ,from every direction, an avalanche of destructive hate for everything Britain has done in the world
Those who attack Britain in this way do not realise they are attacking -like it or not-one of the main props of civilisation and contemptuously destroying this has been partly responsable for getting the world into the terrible condition its in now

The Acropolis Museum Building
It is clear from the pictures ,that this building represents in its most pure form ,what I call The Architecture of Hate.One wonders how many pencils were splintered, as Bernard Tschumi,grasping them like knives ,slashed like a maniac at the drawing pad when making the initial sketches,the ripped papers scattering to the floor...
The Nazis had a great love of classical architecture but if they had won the war this is the building they would have built.
Few nations can have destroyed so completely such a vital part of their cultural heritage so brutally and decisivly as does this building
It looms over the whole Acropolis site like some monstrous apparition,a sixties British comprehensive school,a seventies Algerian car park,all with the addition of invisible machine guns ceaselessly trained on the cowering Parthenon vistors on the other side.

But it is in the interior that one suddenly realise why the marbles can never be displayed here.
One of the arguments for their return was that they could be displayed with the natural Athenian light falling on them.In this Terminal 7 ,stuck on the wall ,they become merely little more than a bit of decoration glimpsed for a moment as we hasten to Gate 47
But that is not all.
Because we suddenly become aware that the marbles do not belong here or in Athens at all.
When found they had been encrusted with the dirt of centuries and in their original condition on their original site they were painted in the most hideous of garish colours, making them look like Victorian fairground gargoyles as was of course, the Parthenon itself.

So we can say clearly:
The marbles exhibited under the grey skies of London ARE WORKS OF ART IN THEIR OWN RIGHT.
They exist entirely in their own right
Their origins are completely irrelevant.The idea of sticking them on the wall of an Athenian airport terminal will totally destroy their magical grey London beauty and above all WILL NOT RELATE TO THEIR ORIGINS IN ANY WAY-as they were originally painted in what nowadays would be considered hideous colours.
The British Museum should now do the following.
It should have casts made of the marbles and have then completely restored-arms legs heads -everything.It should then have them painted in their original hideous colours and present them to the Greeks for exhibition.If the Greeks refused this offer the British Government should obtain premises and arrange for an exhibition of its own in Athens.The Madame Tussaud Company who have a reputation for presenting the horrific and macabre would probably be willing to take on this project.
This would put an end this nonsense that has gone on far to long.
Lord Truth has spoken.

I will not now mention the contempt I have for Beards fence sitting attitude -that must wait for another time.

[Paul Potts]

In that case, Sam Loose, the British Museum is a shame. The copies, if copies are possible, should be displayed there, if they're all that interested in the artefacts; but I suspect they're thooughly bored by the whole business and would rather get on with something else, but I cannot suggest what that might be.

Paulo

[Sam Loose]

The British Museum without the Elgin Marbles would be a shame, a highlight of many a visit. I would love to see them on the Parthenon though... At least there should be copies.

[Tony Francis]

http://www.kachelofen-usa.com/whatis.htm
They got the Pergamon Altar to Berlin in bits and pieces (which the locals were using to supplement building their houses).
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Altar
It was done by German Engineering, by the German engineer Carl Humann. (This stub needs to be expanded, if someone is so inclined):
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Humann
Speaking of Stonehenge, I saw the movie "Knights of the Round Table" last month. They knocked down a stone at Stonehenge. Chevy Chase knocked the whole thing down in "European Vacation", so this seems to be a recurring cinematic theme. I also saw "Ivanhoe". When I was 5, I thought this the best movie ever made. Actually, the jousting scenes are the best ever put on film. Recent discoveries have indicated that the Lady Rowena had a Saxon name: "Shebeda", while the character played by Elizabeth Taylor's Saxon name was "Shewannabeda". If every thing had worked out, Ivan and his wife would have been known as Ivan and Shebeda Hoe; whereas the Tayor character would have been known as Shewannabeda Hoe.

[Shawcross]

"Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set."

The absurd (and rather frightening) vitriol launched by those Greek nationalists who have caught a whiff of foreign interference with their culture is understandable, but deeply ironic: all it does is highlight how very young modern Greece is, and how insecure in its failure to live up to ancient grandeur - post-imperial Britain faces a dismal couple of millennia on this showing.
Let me be controversial: some nations simply are better caretakers of the physical remnants of the past, and, still more shockingly, more deserving heirs to its culture. When modern Greek classicists match those of Britain and Germany, we will hear their case. Until then, the only treasures we should return to the Greeks are the words of their greatest historian (and contemporary of the completion of the Parthenon) : "The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they have to accept." (Thuc. 5.89 - from the lips of some superbly ruthless and imperialist Athenians!)

[Paul Potts]

Clearly you provoke some discussion on the Elgin Marbles. By the why "Elgin" and why "marbles"? Did the old ransacker actually make them?

This is not to enter into that fray, but to suggest there are bigger issues here within which the details are a distraction.

I refer to the fantasy culture of "Nationalism", within which Greeks are Greeks and Brits are Brits, and God help us, Australians
are Australians. Well, I suggest you only have to make a fuss of it if you have an identity problem already. "Tests" indeed to establish your affinity to the "culture". I'd deliberatelly fail any test as to my Britishness if set one. The failure might, to intelligent examiners, establish just how "British" I am (English even - but English I do not want to be - Celtic perhaps).

Now to the "marbles". The Greeks of now are not the Greeks of then in any sense other than that they speak Greek. They make a big fuss about what place is to be called "Macedonia". Why? The Greeks of old were not "Greeks" any more than the Iranians are "Eyeranians". They were "Hellenes", but whether that meant a racial or geographic or psychological or linguistic unity is anyone's guess. Perhaps anyone was Greek who could understand Homer. But was s/he Greek? Even Homer was Ionian, so I'm told, which means, roughly speaking, Turkish. "The Greeks" may have sacked Troy, but that war, it seems, continues.

Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae, Orbis de patria certat, Homere, tua.

So then, was Beethoven a German (there was no Germany then), because he was born in somewhere called Bonn? or Georg Friedrich Händel (like the marbles, he is counted as English, even though his knowledge of English was plainly, shall we say limited, as was that of the Georgian court.)? Henry James was not American, or TS Eliot. P G Wodehouse is plainly English, even though he did not live in England - could not, actually. So Keats was a Roman, and Byron a Greek and Domenico Scarlatti Spanish, well, I must let you go on if you care to.

My point is that this obsession with nations and nationality has no purchase on anything at all, except in the later 19th century when musicians and poets did indeed follow the political need to absolutise the nation state, in which frenzy the wars of the 20th
century were fought. I suppose we have to blame Napoleon for much this, and his clumsy look-alike Hitler. They lost their wars,
but their ideology remains dominant.

The current distress of Africa can be directly related to all this - the imposition of Nationhood on regions where the borders did not reflect the demography. Not ever, hardly anywhere. However are local politicians supposed to cope with this, except through violence? Mr Brown can tut-tut against Mugabe, but the tut-tutting will make more sense when there is a united Ireland.

Paulo

[Peter Foot]

Keep up, Mary. Blogs must move on.

The news about Ceasar and the landings in 55BC are desperately in need of a blog column entry immediately. The link is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7483566.stm. When and where did they take place? Are astronomers and tide merchants the new Classicists? Core value stuff and, of course, RAE relevant.

Peter

[Lidwina]

Sorry, Parthenon not Pergamon, little typo there to brighten up one's day.
The Parthenon looks like a bomb hit it. It is still very pretty, shining white against the blue sky. But like most amateurs, I would find it even prettier if they put the roof back on, and the sculptures back where they were meant to be, with all the missing pieces replaced. Thank goodness the Victorians put the tops back on Stonehenge.

The Pergamon altar (if that is what it is) looks like a giant Kachelofen, very fine indeed. How ever did they manage to get it to Berlin?

[anthony alcock]

The story I like most about "stealing" national treasures is the one about Ptolemy III borrowing the works of the great tragedians for a substantial deposit from Athens to have them copied, but being so unwilling to part with the "originals" (whatever date they actually were) that he simply forfeited the money, kept them and returned the copies. Obviously a gent. And cheaper than a military campaign.

[F.Gamberini]

"Conversation"? Surely you mean "dialectical dialogue"? I mean, it's all about dialectics, man, like. Innit?
Cool.

[PL]

What about when the artist himself is the culprit, as when Leonardo took the Mona Lisa with him to France? Treason to one's own blood and soil?

[Pergamene]

Pergamon is the Turkish city from which Berlin took altar reliefs; the Parthenon is the Athenian temple from which Elgin took temple reliefs.

As if the question of correct location weren't confused enough...

[Lidwina]

Actually, Greece has been overrun a few times since the Pergamon was built, so the blood argument won't work there either.

To commit a bit of plagiarism myself: Why do ruins have to be disappointing? The Pergamon looks like someone blew it up, and the Elgin marbles look like someone picked up the rubble and shipped it home in boxes. (My children looked in the next room in case they had missed something. "Is this all?") If the Greeks cough up the 5 sovereigns they can have it all back. I think the only reason for hanging on to the stuff is to tease the Greeks, but the joke is a bit stale now. Then then they should put the roof back on, and find all the hands and feet and noses in the rubble and glue them back on, and paint it brightly as it was originally.

Give the new museum a few years and it will be grimy like the rest of Athens, then it will fit in. I will visit when I am there again, in the hope of air-conditioning and a decent cafe.

[PL]

Dennis Menos, Yes, but the Parthenon was designed not to entertain tourists but to glorify Athena and house her treasury. Should the modern Athenians abjure the vows of their baptisms and take up the cult of Athena, restoring her temple to make it suitable for that use again?

[Richard]

Lidwina - I agree wiith you on some general points. But the explosion in the Parthenon was long before Elgin removed the bits he took to Britain (it was in 1687, I think - late seventeenth century, anyway).

I like very much the idea of the glass floor with the excavations visible underneath. Similarly, it was a brilliant stroke when the new underground system was put in to have the places where there are glass walls underground, showing the stratigraphy.

What I remember best from visiting the old acropolis museum was seeing the great sixth century sculpture of the "moschophoros": a youth carrying a calf... I like the archaic material (which Elgin wasn't interested in) so much more than the Age Of Perikles Emblems Of Democracy Parthenon sculptures (not that I'm dissing Pheidias and his colleagues, of course: I should say I like the archaic stuff *even* more!).

All best,
R

[PL]

As I expected, this is turning into a forum on the "restitution of works of art" debate. Personally I think the whole thing is silly. Lidvina mentions the Pergamon altar in Berlin. On a strong reading of the restitution principle that should go back, I suppose, to Turkey. But wait a minute. There were no Turks in Asia Minor in the fourth (was it?) century BC. Ah yes, but Turks there were, in some sense, even then, so the right thing to do is ship the sculptures to someplace like Turkmehnistan? Or perhaps they should go to Turkey? We'd have to resolve the question whether blood trumps soil or soil trumps blood. If there's going to be any general restitution of works of art, there is obviously going to have to be a statute of limitations, as there is for crimes much worse than the one putatively committed by Lord Elgin.

[Dennis Menos]

Mary, Mary,
when will you understand? The Marbles don't belong in London. Phidias created them to decorate the Parthenon, not to fill a hall in the British Museum. Time to end the tales and false excuses, Mary! Time to return the Marbles home!

[Lidwina]

Not stolen, but bought for - I think - 5 sovereigns from the Turks, who were not taking care of Athens very well anyway. Is the wrecked state of the Parthenon not the result of the Turks carelessly storing explosives there? If Elgin had not appropriated them where would they be now? Even more broken and tatty than they already are. Sorry, British Museum, but it is not pretty in there. The Atehnians should have some copies made, with all the heads and arms put back on.

Museums are full of stuff brought from somewhere else. The Brits in Empire days did not alway pay for this stuff, but then neither did anyone else. Not a new phenomenon, if you visit Hagia Sophia you can see pieces from other, older places built into the fabric, proudly displayed as war booty. I expect this is OK because the building is so ancient.

Now the Pergamon Museum in Berlin has some nice stuff, and in much better shape. Why is no-one wanting it back? Or are they?

[Mike Ryan]

The days of rape and pillage are over. The B.Empire is a dead duck.
Time to restore stolen goods and make amends where ever possible.