Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday programme

  • Dr Tiffany Jenkins is one of the line up of new appointees that has raised cultural and historical hackles, writes Vanessa Thorpe for the Observer

    'British Museum is right to keep Parthenon marbles, says new trustee. Historian Dr Tiffany Jenkins is one of the line up of new appointees that has raised cultural and historical hackles' are the headlines of Vanessa Thorpe's article in the Observer.

    Tiffany has written a book and stated that the Parthenon Marbles can continue to remain divided and tell two different stories, a narrative used by the BM for some time. Tiffany also visited the Acropolis Museum and spoke at the Art for Tomorrow event in Athens 16-20 June 2022. The panel debating 'Who Really Owns Art?' a complex question surrounding restitution issues faced by many museums included Tristram Hunt, Tiffany Jenkins, Victor Ehikhamenor, and was moderated by Farah Nayeri. The setting, the Acropolis Museum's terrace with direct views to the Parthenon did not sway Tiffany.

    We would like to remind readers of BCRPM's late Chair Eddie O'Hara's response to Tiffanyand BCRPM member, Dr Peter Thonemann's article in the TSL (2016). Peter writes:

    "You will not be surprised to learn that Jenkins is a repatriation sceptic. There are, she thinks, “good reasons for the continued separation of the two sets, and for the retention and display of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum”. For example, she is particularly struck by the fact that “It is not possible to call any of the pieces from the Parthenon, when isolated from the others, inartistic. What is so interesting about them is that they are still magnificent when standing alone”. This strikes me as a curious argument. Take an analogy drawn, once again, by Christopher Hitchens: imagine that the Mona Lisa had been sawn in half during the Napoleonic wars, and that one half had ended up in a museum in Copenhagen, the other in Lisbon. Neither half, isolated from the other, would be inartistic; each would still be magnificent when standing alone. But that would not be a good reason for their continued separation from one another."

     PM Mitsotakis also used the Mona Lisa as an example when he spoke with Laura Kuenssberg (November 2023).

    In Sunday's Observer article, Vanessa Thorpe writes: "The latest appointments to the British Museum’s trustees include an academic expert opposed to the ­restitution of stolen antiquities, Dr Tiffany Jenkins, author of Keeping Their Marbles.

    In her book Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums… and Why They Should Stay There, Jenkins examined the influences behind the high-profile battle to return museum artefacts in an attempt to repair historical wrongs. Her views are at odds with those of another well-known historian and broadcaster, Professor Alice Roberts, who recently met the Greek culture minister, Lina Mendoni,while filming her series on Ancient Greece for Channel 4."

    We sincerely hope that Dr Tiffany Jenkins will begin to appreciate that the story of these sculptures, should they become reunited in Athens, deserve a new chapter. A chapter that extolls understanding and empathy, whilst encouraging cultural cooperation in the 21st century.

    Institutions across the world in recent years have begun to acknowledge the importance of returning significant cultural items while still promoting global access to heritage. As  the Metropolitan Museum of Art returned the bronze griffin head to the  Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Dr Lina Mendoni, Greece's Minister of Culture and Sport spoke at the event held in Olympia last week acknowledging that Greece has agreed to loan the griffin head back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for future exhibitions. 

    Admittedly lending parts of the Parthenon sculptures to London will be more complex than lending the bronze griffin head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but here's to a future for the Parthenon Marbles where they can, at long last, re-join their other halves in the Parthenon Gallery of the Acropolis Museum. 

  • Why the Greek PM won the debate over the Elgin marbles, explains Victoria Hislop


    A growing number of the British public believe that the sculptures held in the British Museum should be reunified with those in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. So why did Rishi Sunak seem so offended by Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s remarks?

    The morning after Greece went into meltdown at the cancellation of a scheduled meeting between the Greek and the British prime ministers, a spokesperson for Rishi Sunak said the Greek government had “provided reassurances that they would not use the visit [of Kyriakos Mitsotakis] to relitigate long-settled matters relating to the ownership of the Parthenon sculptures”.

    It was news to me that discussions over ownership of those sculptures were “long-settled”. Since when? The discussion is very much alive – and more hotly debated than ever. Not only do surveys continue to  indicate that the British public believe that the sculptures held in the British Museum should be reunified with those in the Acropolis Museumin Athens, but the debate constantly grows over ownership of many other cultural artefacts and treasures that have been housed there from the days of empire.

    But there is an even more significant factor with the Parthenon sculptures. And this is to do with what I will bluntly call daylight robbery.

    I suspect that Sunak, like many British politicians, has not read enough around the detailed facts of what actually happened back in the 19th century when Elgin employed a team of people to hack and crowbar those beautiful treasures from the Parthenon in Athens. Most significantly, perhaps, he doesn’t know (and I am giving him the benefit of the doubt) that Elgin did not have permission from the Ottoman authorities to do this. He merely had a letter which stated he could take impressions of the sculptures in order to make copies. He was not supposed to steal the originals.

    Another fact (not hearsay, but fact) is that Elgin took them with the intention of decorating his own mansion in Scotland. The only reason they found their way to the British Museum (where they were eventually scrubbed with wire wool to “clean them up” and were thereby damaged) was that Elgin was bankrupt by the time the sculptures reached the English shores, and he needed to flog them. So yes, money was paid for them by the British government, but they were purchasing stolen goods.

    The British Museum does nothing to dispel the myth of Elgin’s supposed “saving” of the marbles from the Ottoman empire which might not respect their value and beauty. And they have the nerve to talk about a “loan” to Greece. It is patronising beyond words.

    The British Museum still has the shadow of a scandal over it – no one has yet been arrested for the systematic thefts of items from its collections. It has not explained why they ignored all the information that was being passed to them about this, for over two years. They have still not appointed a new permanent director. I assume much is going on behind closed doors, but nothing that is being shared with us the public, odd given that this is an institution that receives plenty from the public purse. How well do they curate their artefacts (99 per cent of which live in a store that is invisible to us)?

    So, if this meeting truly was cancelled because Sunak was offended in some way by Mr Mitsotakis’s comments on the sculptures during Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday programme, then this was a very unstatesmanlike reaction to say the least. Surely one of the skills of a politician is to discuss, debate, argue, and share differences.
    So if Sunak was afraid of doing this, I think it massively reduces his reputation. He is already doing badly in the polls, so this will not have helped. And if it was because Mitsotakis had already spoken to Keir Starmer, it’s a manifestation of his weakness (as well as inability to pick decent advisers). The decision was rude, disrespectful, and an enormous diplomatic error.

    Greece is in meltdown because of this slight. Post-Brexit, Britain has already lost a fair number of friends in Europe. Why did Sunak decide to alienate one of the oldest and most treasured among them? I am truly baffled.

    Victoria Hislop is a member of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, and wrote this comment article for the Independent. Her latest novel, The Figurine, was inspired by the issue of archaeological theft.

     

     
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