The new Acropolis Museum and the Marbles of Elgin
Even in that age of imperialism, many Brits saw Elgin’s acts as cultural vandalism. Lord Byron slammed the marbles’ removal in his bestselling epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The call for their return has grown since Greece won its independence from Ottoman rule in 1829. In the noisy debate over the restitution of ancient artworks to their original locale, no case is more controversial or inflamed than the question of the Parthenon marbles: should the British finally send them back?
Later this month a new Acropolis Museum will open in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens. The building is more than a bold composition in glass, steel, concrete and stone: it is architecture as argument, explicitly meant to sway opinion over the fate of the marbles. Designed by the Swiss-born, New York–based Bernard Tschumi, the three-level structure begins to express its agenda in the way it defers to an ancient settlement that was discovered during excavation of the construction site. (The building was adapted so that it is raised on concrete pillars, allowing archeological work to continue beneath it—and with glass floors that will give visitors a dramatic view of the ongoing dig.)
It’,Coach Handbags;s the crown of the museum that will make the most powerful case for restitution: the top floor is a glass box that is canted at an angle away from the structure beneath it—like an uneven stack of cartons—so that it lines up perfectly with the Parthenon, visible about 1,000 feet away. Many of the Parthenon’s original sculptures were lost or destroyed over the centuries; those remaining on the temple were removed in recent years because the pollution in Athens was eating away the marble. Now, along with other sculptures, the frieze that encircled the temple—it depicts a procession of figures, some bringing sacrifices—is installed in the new museum in its original configuration on the Parthenon. To accentuate the ghostly absence of the missing marbles, there are white plaster copies to fill the gaps.
The history of how the marbles got to London is muddy enough to bolster both sides of the argument. When the seventh Earl of Elgin took up residence in the embassy in Constantinople in 1799, he began to pursue his passion for classical antiquities. He sent emissaries on a mission to -Athens, which was then a shabby little outpost that had been under the Ottoman thumb for 400 years. At first, Elgin wanted only some sketches and plaster casts made of the great sculptures and reliefs on the Parthenon and other nearby ruins. But his permit from the Ottoman sultan granted his crew access to the Acropolis—then a Turkish garrison—and stated that “no one meddle with their scaffolding or implements nor hinder them from taking away any pieces of stone with inscriptions and figures.” Politics was at play here at least as much as art appreciation. The Ottomans were grateful to Britain, which had blocked the advance of Napoleon in Egypt—and over several years, Elgin’s agents chiseled away at the most potent symbol of the golden age of classical Greeks. But the gods got even,Hermes kelly, with Elgin at least. In the course of his Ottoman escapade, he lost the following: his beautiful and rich wife to his best friend, a big chunk of his nose to a nasty infection he’d caught in Constantinople and, ultimately, his marbles, which he was forced to sell to the British government in 1816 for ?35,000 (roughly equivalent to $4 million today) to dig himself out of debt after his divorce.
Is there a glimmer of hope that all the remaining marbles from the Parthenon might eventually be reunited, at least temporarily? The trustees of the British Museum have stated they would consider lending the marbles to Athens—though some are too fragile to travel in either direction, notes the director,Louis Vuitton Handbags, Neil MacGregor—provided the Greek government acknowledge Britain’s ownership of the artworks. For many Greeks, that’s a sore point. “How can anyone dare say they belong to the British?” asks Samaras. “These are treasures taken out of the Acropolis when Greece was under enemy occupation.”
From Newsweek; excerpts,replica PRADA, edited by Greece Travel Blog