A bitter new row over ownership of the Elgin marbles has erupted, threatening to eclipse the inauguration this week of a major new museum in Athens designed to house the contested masterpieces.
Just days before the opening of the €130m New Acropolis Museum, officials in Athens and London were this weekend engaging in barbed exchanges over the classical treasures.
The dispute, which has indirectly dragged in the Queen, the Greek-born Duke of Edinburgh, and Gordon Brown, re-erupted when Hannah Boulton, the British Museum’s spokesperson, told an Athens radio station that it would consider a loan request from Greece provided that it acknowledged, as is customary with all borrowing institutions, that London owned the pieces. The sculptures, she said, could be displayed in the New Acropolis Museum for three or four months, “the length of time for an average loan of objects”.
Antonis Samaras, Athens’s culture minister, rejected the proposal, saying that acceptance would be tantamount to legitimising “Elgin’s deeds”.
“Three months won’t be enough to take them out of their boxes,” he said, giving the Observer a guided tour of the concrete and glass museum. “As a time frame, it’s bizarre. And agreeing to the condition [of ownership] would be like sanctifying [Lord] Elgin’s deeds and legitimising the theft of the marbles and the break-up of the monument 207 years ago. No Greek government could accept that.”
But he added: “For the first time, they are opening a window. They see they have to do something, now that the new museum is here.”
As the row raged, Boulton sent out damage limitation emails. To the Observer, she wrote: “It’s not the case that an offer to lend the Parthenon Sculptures was specifically made … It is clear from Mr Samaras’s statement that he does not recognise the British Museum’s legal ownership of the sculptures in our collection, which makes any meaningful discussion on loans virtually impossible.”
Celebrities, royals and heads of state are expected to attend Saturday’s inauguration of the museum, built within sight of the Parthenon, at the foot of the Acropolis. However, delegates from Britain, including the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, have been quick to send their regrets. Last week, Gordon Brown declined his invitation. Ben Bradshaw, the new secretary for culture and sport, followed suit, as did Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum. It has been left for two British Museum curators to represent the UK.
The new museum’s top level — the luminous Parthenon galleries — house copies of the monumental sculptures that depict the Panathenaic procession, the decorative frieze which adorned the temple until Lord Elgin removed much of it during his tenure as British ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. Bankrupted by the venture, Elgin sold the pieces to the British government, which presented them to the British Museum in 1816.
On Saturday, archaeologists removed protective cellophane from plaster-cast copies that Athens acquired from the British Museum in 1840. “Most museums like to cover copies with a patina to make them look more real, but we have taken a very different approach,” said Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, the archaeologist in charge of the museum. “We want to show that these are indeed copies, that we are not afraid of plaster. That the real ones are somewhere else.”
For the Greeks, the museum — designed by Bernard Tschumi and co-sponsored by the EU — is the ultimate propaganda tool. They say the building will do away with the argument that Athens has nowhere good enough to house the wonders of its golden age.
Pressure to return the marbles will also come from the thousands expected to gather at the foot of the Acropolis to demand the “immediate return of the looted and mutilated Parthenon sculptures” on the eve of the opening. – guardian.co.uk