The purpose of this topic is to discuss the ethics surrounding the colonial spoils or “acquisitions”, and what their fate should be. As many countries have “acquired”, what can be perceived as parts of the cultural and artistic inheritance of many other countries, in more or less dubious ways, there is absolutely no reason for nation bashing. The use of the specific example is a choice of Garb. Because of his familiarity with the issue.
At the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies in Mexico of 1982 a vote on a resolution calling for the return of the Parthenon marbles and their reincorporation on the building was passed. In October 1983 a formal bilateral request for the return was made by the Greek Government to the British Government- the first ever made. Following discussion with the Director and Trustees of the British Museum, this request was formally rejected by the British Government in April 1984. It was followed in September by a further submission of a claim through UNESCO, which was similarly rejected in 1985, after consultation with the British Museum. Successive British governments have held the position that this is a matter for the Museum's Trustees who are the legal owners of the Parthenon Sculptures.
But let us go 200 years back and follow the fate of the marbles
The story begins with a deal that Elgin struck in 1801. The Earl of Elgin, a passionate amateur collector of antiquities, had proposed himself for the post of British ambassador to Turkey's Ottoman Empire because of his health. He had syphilis, a disease which was to leave him as distressingly noseless as many of the chipped statues he collected, and the doctors recommended a warm climate.
Europe was in the grip of the Romantic revival, and he was obsessively keen to record and, if possible, obtain as many of the ancient Greek treasures now in the uncaring care of Turkey. His purpose, he wrote, was to improve the modern art of Great Britain by permitting its artists to see firsthand the greatest examples of sculpture ever made.
Ruling a wide swath of the ancient world, the potentates of Istanbul were pleased to accept bribes, gifts, money and munitions from the warring countries of England and France. In return, they gave permission to record, then sketch, then dismantle, and finally, transport the monuments and sculptures by earlier inhabitants of the empire they now ruled. They regarded the newfound passion of the European aristocracy and artists for ancient Greek artifacts as faintly ludicrous. But if the English and the French wanted to compete in carting those long-neglected relics halfway round the world, let them.
So it was that Elgin (called "Eggy" by his vivacious young bride) was able to wheedle and buy permission to collect any chunks of the Parthenon crowning Athens' Acropolis that had crashed to the ground, and, he airily assumed, any more that might possibly fall down in the future.
Built between 447 and 432 B.C., the Parthenon was a vast building masterminded by the Athenian statesman Pericles. Over the years, the Acropolis had many times been a battleground. In 1687 a Turkish powder magazine in the temple exploded after a direct hit by besieging Venetians, destroying a large part of it. The rubble was used as building material and rifled by souvenir hunters. All that was left intact of the three-dimensional art that had filled the building was part of the frieze and metopes (sculpted pictures) and some pediment sculptures.
Elgin set about dismantling 274 feet of the original 524-foot frieze, 15 of the metopes and 17 figures from the pediments. They ultimately filled over 100 large packing cases. That some of the best examples of Phidias' art broke into fragments while being lowered to the ground was unfortunate, but that did not stop Elgin from squirreling up the bits.
The treasures' subsequent adventures included sinking in shipwrecks, heavy-handed salvaging, being possessed by and rescued from Napoleon's fleet, and then lying, dispersed and neglected -- for many years awaiting transportation to London.
Elgin himself suffered imprisonment in France, the infidelity and divorce of his countess, worsening health and near-bankruptcy caused by the enormous cost of dismantling, transporting and storing 120 tons of marbles, which were finally piled up in the back garden of a house at the corner of Piccadilly and Park Lane.
Most distressing for Elgin was finding that his reputation had become that of a despoiler of an ancient civilization. His detractors were led by the mad, bad Lord Byron, whose hand probably carved on the Acropolis the lines, "Quod Non Fecerunt Gothi, Fecerunt Scoti" -- "What the Goths spared, the Scots have destroyed."
But Napoleon met his Waterloo, and the loot that he had collected for the Louvre was sent back: The four horses from St. Mark's to Venice, Rubens' "Descent from the Cross" to Antwerp, the Medici Venus to Florence. And so, at last, victorious England was able to consider buying the Parthenon Marbles from Lord Elgin.
Elgin claimed that he personally had spent 62,440 pounds on bribes, workmen, transportation and storage -- roughly $10 million at today's prices -- but the best offer a government committee could come up with was 35,000 pounds. Reluctantly, he took it, and returned to Scotland.
The British government handed the marbles over to the British Museum for safekeeping and preservation, but they soon fell victim to the misguided Romantic notion that all Greek art should be pristine white. In fact, the Parthenon Marbles were probably brightly painted when new and were certainly dark brown when removed by Elgin (although how much of that was grime and pollution is debatable). Nor did the Victorians like their sculptures incomplete: If noses, arms and genitalia had been chipped off, new ones were often stuck on.
Over the next century, the golden patina of the Elgin Marbles was scrubbed whiter and whiter until the final desecration, by order of Sir Joseph (later Baron) Duveen. The picture dealer had made millions of dollars selling often dubious and touched-up old masters to the new rich of the United States, and was now busily buying honors for himself. In 1928 he offered to build a new gallery for the British Museum to house the Elgin Marbles -- on condition that they were made more attractive to the public (and reflected more glory on himself).
On his orders, paid masons attacked the marbles with metal tools leaving them whiter than white but -- according to the modern Greeks -- irreparably harmed. Dr. R.D. Barnett, then the museum's keeper of Western Asiatic antiquities, wrote a suppressed memo detailing his shock at seeing a laborer "day after day using hammer and chisel and wire brushes."
So damaged were the Elgin Marbles that they were placed behind barriers -- still there today -- so that the public could not get close enough to see the ravages. And serious scholars have always resented the way Duveen arranged them around the sides of his gallery, when they were meant to be seen as a continuous narrative as they were approached and circled.
In Elgin's day, the marbles were exhaustively studied by working artists, who had the benefit of naked models in poses echoing those of the statues. Today they are high on tourist lists and are, indeed, the very best value in London, as entry to the museum is free.
Oddly, for a noncommercial institution, the British Museum allows champagne and gourmet food parties in the gallery in return for high rental fees. The marbles have become a prized setting for corporate hospitality parties. These parties have got the Museum into more hot water, as guests are even permitted to be photographed in Ancient Greek fancy dress with the Elgin Marbles as a decorative background.
Sir Kenneth Alexander, a former trustee of the National Museum of Scotland, describes this as a "crass misuse of one of the world's greatest antiquities." Andrew Dismore, a Greek-speaking member of Parliament, says: "I am frankly dismayed at the attitude of the museum. What are we going to have next? Themed orgies in the Roman galleries?"
A museum publicist declared: "I am amazed that there should be any reaction to the museum holding dinners and receptions there. Everybody does it now."
At a symposium arranged by the museum to placate Greek activists in December, an official confessed for the first time that, "The way Duveen went about cleaning the sculptures was a scandal, and the way the museum tried and failed to cover it up was a scandal."
"The British Museum is not infallible; it is not the pope," admitted Dr. Ian Jenkins, deputy keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities. "Its history has been a series of good intentions marred by the occasional cock-up: The cleaning was such a cock-up."
Mark O'Neill, director of Glasgow Museums, who has returned the Ghost Dance Shirt originally taken from the corpse of a Sioux warrior at the Battle of Wounded Knee, believes it could be as much as 10 percent for museums with major ethnographic collections: "It's all about values and ethics. A shirt that was ripped off the body of a dead Sioux had no business in our collection."
The looting of treasures has been going on at least since Biblical times. It is recorded in Chapter 52 of the Book of Jeremiah that "the Chaldaeans broke up the bronze pillars from the Temple of the Lord, the wheeled stands and the bronze sea that were in the Temple of Yahweh, and took all the bronze away to Babylon."
More recently, in World War II, Germany plundered 427 museums in the Soviet Union, taking the pick of them to Berlin. The National Gallery of Art in Washington coveted 202 paintings salvaged from the wreckage of Germany and "liberated" some of them. The decision was supported by Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum, who opined, "The American people have earned the right in this war to such compensation if they choose to take it."
American archive officers on the spot demurred. In the Wiesbaden Manifesto, they stated that "the transportation of these works to America establishes a precedent which is neither morally tenable nor trustworthy." President Truman agreed, and all the art taken to the United States for "safeguarding" was subsequently returned.
So should the British museum return the marbles?
List of sources:
on the history of the marbles
on Elgin
on the present state
the view of the BM
Reply With Quote
but the general guilt of imperialism cannot be used to prize a legitimately aquired object (which incidently is a product and celebration of imperialism itself) away from its owners. If you think it was aquired illegitimately either explain how it could have been more legitimately aquaired at the time (and be realistic) or explain why its removal was never legitimate in a legal, rather than patriotic or mora, sense.
