Exciting News for Athenians and Future Visitors!

[GreenFamily]

Negotiations between Athens officials and the British to bring the Parthenon sculptures back to Athens have been going on for a year and are about 90% close to done. 
https://www.politico.eu/article/greece-in-secret-talks-with-british-museum-over-elgin-marbles-report/amp/

Edited December 4, 2022 by GreenFamily

[cruisemom42]

What delightful news, if it happens. Fingers crossed. 

 

I've seen them at the British Museum, and I've seen the space allotted to them in the Acropolis Museum and there's no doubt in my mind that they'd be better off in Greece, any way you look at it.

 

[marazul]

I'll believe it when I see it. 

[John Bull]

They should have been repatriated decades ago !!

 

JB 🙂

[GreenFamily]

[irvington]

That's good news. I really like the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

[pdmlynek]

Although I understand the political motivation behind this, I am not sure what the point of this is.  Nor do I think it wise.

 

When we think of ancient history, our perception is shaped in a large part of what we see in our museums, or what our parents, grandparents saw in museums that was local to them. What our college professors saw in museum, what the  text book writers saw in museums.

 

 

A visit to an Ancient Greek section of a museum in London, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, etc. is an advertisement for people to visit Greece (or Egypt, Rome, etc.)  Indeeed, 25% of Greece's GDP is derived from tourism.  I like visiting Greece, in part, because I love Ancient History.  How much tourism would there be if people outside of Greece would be ignorant about Ancient Greece, just like today they are ignorant of, for example, the Shunga Empire, Rashidun Caliphate, or Mali Empire because we just don't see their artifacts in museums?

 

And let's suppose that some artifacts are returned.  So what?  Greece is deluged by Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Greek artifacts.  There are hundreds of Ancient Greece museums all over Greece.  Every county or town in Greece has a museum of Ancient Greece; heck, there is even an archeological museum in the Athens Airport. Returning all of the artifacts is not going to enrich Greece in any depreciabe amount and the rest of the world would be much poorer because of it.

 

There has got to be a better way.

[marazul]

I believe the negotiations are limited to the Elgin marbles.  

And I agree with the value of museums. The collections can be built by negotiation and legitimate purchases, loans or donations.  Plunder is a different matter.

[cruisemom42]

14 hours ago, pdmlynek said:

Although I understand the political motivation behind this, I am not sure what the point of this is.  Nor do I think it wise.

 

When we think of ancient history, our perception is shaped in a large part of what we see in our museums, or what our parents, grandparents saw in museums that was local to them. What our college professors saw in museum, what the  text book writers saw in museums.

 

 

A visit to an Ancient Greek section of a museum in London, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, etc. is an advertisement for people to visit Greece (or Egypt, Rome, etc.)  Indeeed, 25% of Greece's GDP is derived from tourism.  I like visiting Greece, in part, because I love Ancient History.  How much tourism would there be if people outside of Greece would be ignorant about Ancient Greece, just like today they are ignorant of, for example, the Shunga Empire, Rashidun Caliphate, or Mali Empire because we just don't see their artifacts in museums?

 

And let's suppose that some artifacts are returned.  So what?  Greece is deluged by Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Greek artifacts.  There are hundreds of Ancient Greece museums all over Greece.  Every county or town in Greece has a museum of Ancient Greece; heck, there is even an archeological museum in the Athens Airport. Returning all of the artifacts is not going to enrich Greece in any depreciabe amount and the rest of the world would be much poorer because of it.

 

There has got to be a better way.

 

I have to disagree with part of this. 

 

I think people are far better served by having the artifacts from a particular site available close-at-hand for study. For me it is a much more immersive experience to have, for example, the finds from Pompei and Herculaneum in the Naples Archaeological Museum. I can go to the museum fresh from the site, with visions of the particular spaces still in my head and then populate them with the finds.  The same is true for the Acropolis marbles, which has an even closer proximity and relationship with the site. 

 

In this day and age there is plenty of opportunity to acquaint oneself with the culture, art, and history of ancient places via online and television documentaries, virtual reality (something happening at more and more sites), travel guides and writing, etc.  

 

Marazul also makes a good point. When one reads some of the gross misconduct that took place in acquiring some of these artifacts, one cannot help but feel that the right thing to do is to return them. My own college museum, a few years ago, on learning that the Egyptian mummy they had acquired many years ago from a "Believe it or Not" kind of museum at Niagara Falls was actually a looted royal mummy, returned it to Egypt where it can now be viewed in Luxor. Not only did they do the right thing, they also generated a lot of good will.