Did you know that Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, wanted to acquire sculptures from a site in Greece in 1804 during his stint as Ambassador to the Sublime Porte? Your probably do. It’s a familiar story, but doesn’t the date seem a little off? What if I mentioned that the site in question is ancient Olympia, not the Athenian acropolis? Yes, he tried it twice – he didn’t even have the excuse that he needed the money at this point, as he didn’t bring divorce proceedings against Mary Nisbet until 1808. Some of these facts and figures we know very well, but AE Stallings’ article 'Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters (and Actors and Architects) Framed the Ongoing Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Athenian Acropolis' in the 75th anniversary edition of the Hudson Review is a treasure trove of lesser-known trivia about the history of the marbles debate, much of it in the public domain despite its obscurity. For example, did you know that Morosini, the Venetian commander who ordered the direct hit on the Parthenon-cum-munitions store in the siege of 1687, always took his cat Nini into battle? Or that his munitions expert was a Swede, Count Konigsmark? Or that Nini was stuffed and is now on display at the Mueso Correr in Venice?

Perhaps it’s to be expected that there were other British travellers, like John Bacon Sawrey Morritt and Lord Aberdeen, who sought to take souvenirs of the Parthenon Sculptures in 1795 and 1803 respectively. But to find out that the latter was on the select committee of 1816 feels like a genuine surprise. We even find a kinship with Thomas Bruce, who also never saw the sculptures that bore his name for so long in situ on the Parthenon. In fact, he only spent a total of 59 days in Athens. It stands to reason that Envoys Extraordinary and Ambassadors Plenipotentiary are too busy for much sightseeing – though a successor of his, Lord Strangford, did request a firman guaranteeing the security of the Parthenon during the two sieges of the acropolis during the Greek War of Independence. There are a good few firmans in this article, some of clearer provenance than others.

What Stallings does well is present trivia, even facts one took for granted as general knowledge, in a way that gives them historical context, and makes revelations of them. An hour-long debate, however, can’t rely on the luxury of historical rabbit holes. Intelligence Squared hosted a lively event online entitled Return or Retain? The Parthenon Marbles Debate in September, between former cabinet minister Ed Vaizey, representing the Parthenon Project, and Sir Noel Malcolm, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. Before the debate proper, chair Manveen Rana polled the audience on the question, “Should the marbles go back to Greece?”, with 81% for yes, 17% opposing the motion, and 2% undecided. A good start. By the end of the debate, however, those figures stood at 73%, 26%, and 1% respectively.

That’s a little frustrating, despite the net result being a win. Though Ed Vaizey had strong arguments for restitution, he went about his contributions like a politician - hammering certain soundbites (mostly about the benefit of new treasures coming from Greece to UK in return for the marbles, which is a Parthenon Project objective) a little too often, not really responding to Malcolm, and being a bit ad hominem when replying to the latter, calling his arguments ‘ludicrous’ &c. but maybe that’s within the rules of the debating society game. He could have done with reading Stallings’ article! However, his account of being converted to the marbles’ cause once he was free of the need to follow the status quo as a member of cabinet (his opening spiel), was pretty darn good. We need to hear more converts speak up!

With Ed Vaizey being a member of the Parthenon Project, the prospect of loans by Greece of artefacts previously unseen in the UK was frequently brought up, vividly invoking the queues to see the BM’s Tutankhamun exhibit of the 70s. But he may have hammered this aspect a little too hard, allowing Noel Malcolm to poke holes in the practicality of, say, frequent exchanges of exhibits, sure to cause a few grey hairs among curators on both sides. The prospect of new loans from Greece is attractive (and let’s be reminded that it was first voiced by Greece to the UK government in 2000), but it would be the icing on the cake – perhaps even just the cherry.

Malcolm’s opposition relied on arguments that were old hat at best, and rather depended on Elgin’s Memorandum of 1815, which is the primary source for Elgin’s motivation and modus operandi (apart from the proceedings of the select committee). That memorandum seems from Stallings’ article more likely to be the work of his chaplain, the Revd. Philip Hunt. Malcolm clearly has an intimate knowledge of the power structures in Ottoman provinces and contemporary sharia law. He places a lot of trust in the firman of 1801 – the one that apparently grants Elgin the right to remove and that only exists in Italian translation - and perhaps if Vaizey had had Stallings’ article to hand, he could have pointed to the extreme dubiousness of that firman’s provenance, not to mention another (the third, pay attention), produced in 1805 that stopped Elgin’s agents from collecting any further artefacts.

Granted, Malcolm was generally the more impressive speaker and did much more thinking on his feet. But his bottom line is a deeply un-trendy one: that matters of the deep past[sic] must be held to a different standard than those of the recent past. This came up in his closing comments, and had they come any earlier, Ed Vaizey might well have asked: where’s the line? 208 years ago could be argued to be either. Vaizey’s opening statement made a good point, though he didn’t state it in as many words: that this is not a settled, long-standing matter repurposed for argument’s sake in a manufactured ‘culture war’. This has been a ‘live’ issue since Elgin’s agents started taking artefacts on his behalf in 1801 – before he had even reached Athens.

For example, we know from Stallings’ article that a Greek law of 1832, under King Otto, asserted that “all antiquities within Greece, as works of the ancestors of the Hellenic people, shall be regarded as national property of all Hellenes in general”. This is an example of the deep past rubbing up against the present of 1832 – and exercised in a legislative and geopolitical way that makes it harder to classify the early nineteenth century as the deep past to our present. Regard Hartwig Fischer’s 2019 comment in Ta Nea, that “[moving] a cultural heritage to a museum” is in itself “a creative act”, Stallings makes a very relevant comment:

One might add that it takes another step – a Keats for instance – to complete such a creative act. In Fischer’s sense, though, too, Morosini’s destruction of the building was also a creative act… turning a functional structure, in a flash, into a picturesque ruin, the stuff of Byronic backdrops. Also, if Fischer is right, then this creative act of Elgin and the British Museum is over 200 years old – its creative energy is entirely depleted.

Intelligence Squared’s event was perhaps a good barometer for where the debate is right now: arguments about the Greeks’ ability to care for the sculptures and the ‘floodgates’ argument (here referred to by Malcolm as the “slippery slope”) aren’t cornerstones of the BM’s argument, though they still cling to their status as a universal museum. However, as the polls show, if people are aware of the debate, they’re generally pretty well-informed, and need a fluent, multifaceted argument from the restitution crowd. We have that acumen, of course! Additionally, we must make it amenable to the BM and the UK to play an active part in reshaping themselves for 21st Century museology, rather than having their hand forced by legislation or the prospect of ostracization from the international community.

Some of the oldest chestnuts in the debate turn out to be much older than the era of Mercouri and ‘her’ BM Director David Wilson. Here’s Frederic Harrison refuting the floodgates argument, writing in The Nineteenth Century journal in 1890:

Of course, the man in Pall Mall or in the club armchair has his sneer ready – “Are you going to send all statues back to the spot where they were found?” That is all nonsense. The Elgin Marbles[sic] stand upon a footing entirely different from all other statues. They are not statues: they are architectural parts of a unique building, the most famous in the world; a building still standing, though in a ruined state, which is the national symbol and palladium of a gallant people, and which is a place of pilgrimage to civilised mankind.

With a few tweaks, that argument would do for us today, though happily it’s less needed as the ‘floodgates’ argument seems to have less currency as time goes on. The tweaks would have to be the references to “civilised mankind” and a “gallant people”, both hints at the race science taken for granted by the Europeans of 1890. Stallings doesn’t shy away from the way that the Marbles were used as both exemplar and evidence to the pseudoscience of colonialism, both in the conflating of whitenesses (marble, skin) and in Elgin’s first money-spinning ruse: exhibiting the sculptures in the presence of naked prize fighters to draw the line between the idealised ancient Greek nude and the peak condition of British athletes’ ‘Nordic’ physiques. I never expected to learn so much about the burgeoning craze for boxing in the 1810s from this article, but there we are. There’s something perverse about learning about half a dozen relatively obscure young men of modest backgrounds because of their brief fetishization by aristocratic aesthetes – yes, Byron was there in the shed on Park Lane, taking in the sights. One of the boxers, John Jackson, was his personal trainer.

Even without the pugilists, the dramatis personae and bibliography of Stallings’ article is exhaustive. Even Napoleon Bonaparte is there (he refused to buy the Marbles from Thomas Bruce). It’s interesting to note that, of the more than one hundred people who wrote, painted (and spoke and drew) in the two centuries-long debate, few Greeks or women appear before the Twentieth century. Likewise, there seems to be a relatively quiet period between the 1930s and ‘80s – perhaps it was this long hegemony, and the BM’s arrogance, that precipitated Mercouri’s campaign coming along when it did.

Stallings’ article is hefty– 110 very readable pages – and should be published as a standalone pamphlet. If that were to happen, it would surely be the best survey of the Marbles debate for the general reader since Christopher Hitchens’ The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunificationwhich came out in 1997, and the third edition published by Verso was launched at Chatham House by BCRPM in May 2008. To finish, here’s what CP Cavafy, probably the most famous Greek after Pericles to appear in this article and one who was raised in the UK, in Liverpool, wrote in the lengthy letters page debate started by Harrison’s Nineteenth Century polemic:

It is not dignified in a great nation to reap profit from half-truths and half-rights; honesty is the best policy, and honesty in the case of the Elgin Marbles[sic] means restitution.

Stuart O'Hara, BCRPM member

Image copyright Matthew Johnson (2018)

"I was deeply moved during a recent visit to the Acropolis Museum in Athens", writes Alfredo Cafasso Vitale. His article was first published in ekathimerini on Thursday 02 June 2022.

With the kind permission from Alfredo Cafasso Vitale, the remainder of the article can also be read below:

This fragment, which is part of the eastern frieze of the Parthenon, depicts a foot and a part of the peplos of Artemis, and was acquired in 1816 by the British consul in Sicily, Robert Fagan. After his death in 1820, it was sold to the Museum of the Royal University of Palermo and from there it was then passed to the Salinas Museum.

The top floor of the Acropolis Museum is a virtual reconstruction of the Parthenon, and the area has been designed, with its position and glass, to reflect, and to not only display this reconstruction, but to also visually link it to the original near 2,500-year-old structure on the Acropolis hill. The Fagan fragmentis now displayed in a glass case, within its place in the reconstruction and also looking out at the actual historical site.

I hope this trip paves the way for a much more important and long-awaited journey of the marbles from the British Museum, “stolen” in the early 1800s by Thomas Bruce, then made Lord Elgin, ambassador of Great Britain to Constantinople.

During the period of Ottoman occupation in Greece, Elgin apparently obtained the permission of the sultan to remove the marbles. These were then dispersed in different locations (the same Fagan fragment came directly from Elgin). Some marbles were lost at sea, during transport, but most eventually arrived at the British Museum.

This process, which is not, in some quarters, considered to be a valid and genuine method of acquisition, has triggered fierce international debates, and has initiated official requests for restitution of the marbles by various Greek governments.

The Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, in the preface to the splendid book by Christopher Hitchens, “The Parthenon Marbles,The Case for Reunification” underlined how the presence of the marbles in London represented the stone manifesto of British colonial arrogance, and how much the marbles belonged, representing their DNA in art, to the Greek people.

These sculptures by Phidias have been requested in vain for almost 40 years by various Greek governments (the first was Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri in 1984), and most recently by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in an interview on British television.

It should be noted that, as a student, Boris Johnson wrote, in an article in Oxford, “…it is evident to me, how much [these marbles] are woven into the Greek identity. It would be a wonderful thing if they could be returned.” Latterly, Ed Vaizey, former minister of culture of the Cameron government, recently stated that they should be in Athens.

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens has transferred its 10 fragments of the Parthenon to the Acropolis Museum, strengthening the reunification process and sparking a fresh discussion about the never dormant request for the return of the marbles.

I hope that the exchange program with Sicily will lead the way to a solution for the return of the marbles, which would, in turn, strengthen Greece’s cultural identity, and perhaps help reinforce it politically and economically. The country has been trying with all its strength and succeeding in re-emerging from the profound crisis of the last decade.

In another indication that perhaps the tide is turning in favor of the return of the marbles, the Musee des Civilizations du Quai Branly in Paris and the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum have initiated the return of African artifacts to Nigeria, improperly taken away during the colonial period from Benin City.

As a footnote, upon exiting the museum, I entered the metro, heading home, at the Acropolis station. Going down to the platform, I was greeted by the giant picture of Melina Mercouri in front of the Parthenon, wrapped in an elegant trench coat, a bundle of wild flowers in her hands, and an immense and radiant smile, which today seems even more radiant. The return process, dreamed of and initiated by her, seems to have perhaps gained some momentum.

Max Norman, Culture correspondent, The Economist writes: "The Parthenon marbles have not budged from the literal and figurative centre of the British Museum in London since they were purchased from Lord Elgin in 1816. The sculptures—about half of the marbles that survive from the temple in Athens—have also been at the centre of the world’s most famous dispute over cultural property since Greece formally demanded their return in 1983."

Although the request for the return of these sculptures was also made before 1983, shortly after Greece gained independence in the 19th century.

"But in 2025, the marbles may finally be on the move—or, at least, negotiations about their status might take a big step forward. Many arguments against returning them have been toppled. The idea that the British Museum is the only competent custodian for the marbles has always seemed slightly spurious, even more so after one of its staff was accused of pilfering almost 2,000 antiquities and selling them on eBay. Just as powerful is a shift in public sentiment: a YouGov poll conducted in 2023 found that 49% of Britons were in favour of handing them back, and just 15% believed they should remain." Add Max Norman and as a campaigning body formed in 1983, BCRPM also welcomed the news of talks between Greece and the British Museum, and continues to congratulate Greece on the ground-breaking work invested at UNESCO's ICPRCP.

It was also encouraging and refreshing to hear UK's new government's Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy at the Labour conference in September stating that repatriation of objects is on the government's agenda.

Time, to find the respectful solution to this long running cultural impasse. And as Max Norman also writes: "In the past few years, restitution has become a regular event." The UK as a a nation looking to lead the way, is recognising the need to address this issue too.

Public awareness of the issues around restitution and repatriation of cultural objects has grown over decades and BCRPM are grateful for those key figures that have championed this too! Support for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles has been active not just in the UK and in Greece but throughout the globe. 

Max Norman's article can be read in full in the Economistand he concludes by quoting Dan Hicks: 'the idea of the museum as “a prison cell, where objects go to die” is now itself a historical relic.' 

Also in the Economist, Tristram Hunt, Director of the V & Aexplains why museums are turning themselves inside out: 'Opening up museums’ storehouses can improve transparency and accountability.'

“But where have you hidden all the other stuff?” This is the perennial question for museum directors, as we are accused of secretly stockpiling vast, unseen treasure troves. The truth is, in our hunger for audiences, we always want to put the best material on display, and as much of it as possible. Yet today’s visitors rightly demand ever more transparency and accountability around historic collections.

The coming year will see the latest example in a new era of access to public holdings with the opening of  East Storehouse in the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park in London. As “encyclopedic” museums in the global north wrestle with questions around the provenance and restitution of contested heritage, part of the response must be to reveal museums’ hidden secrets and put everything on show.

But we know that won’t be enough. As museums bring more objects to light in open storage spaces, the coming year will also see further demands for the restitution of cultural artefacts from institutions in the global north. Many British national museums—such as the British Museum—remain hidebound by laws preventing the “de-accessioning” of material looted during the imperial past.

Amid all the controversies, what is so rewarding, from a museum director’s perspective, is the continuing power of the object itself. For all the hype around digital immersion, and Google glasses, people want to see real things for themselves, not on screens, and want to see looted artefacts sent back home. What we hope to show at East Storehouse is that material culture has lost none of its allure. And we welcome the public challenges that come with putting all the hidden stuff on show." Concludes Tristram Hunt

15 December 2021, artnet

Parthenon Galleries, Room 18 in the Briish Mueum remained closed for 13 months and were reopened this week, on Monday 13 December 2021 

Dan Hicks' Op-Ed article in artnet says it all. Wednesday 15 December 2021 was the 10th anniversary of Christopher Hitchens' death. For those of you that have supported our Committee for nearly four decades and those of you that have joined us recently, the book that Christopher Hitchens wrote, is one to also read. 

Dan Hicks article 'The U.K. Has Held Onto the Parthenon Marbles for Centuries—But the Tide Is Turning' in arnet suggests that change may come by 2030. As we circulated this article to our members, Alex M Benakis emailed a swift response: 'oh please can we do better than 2030! I will be 93! Don't know if I can hang on for that long.'

Dan starts his article by quoting Christopher Hitchens: "those who support the status quo at the British Museum have the great advantage of inertia on their side.” Dan Hicks adds:'Today, things could hardly be more different.' As more museums are considering returing artefacts to their countries of origin. The best example to date are the returns of the Benin Bronzes.

The third edition Christopher Hitchens book 'The Parthenon Marbles, The Case for Reunification' was launched at Chatham House in May 2008 by BCRPM with George Bizos and Christopher Hitchens travelling to London, a year before the opening of the new Acropolis Museum. It is available from Verso, you can follow the link here.

'Now that the Benin Bronzes are being returned by an ever-growing number of European and North American institutions, might we finally see the return of the Parthenon Marbles?' Asks Dan Hicks. He believes so and adds: 'today, the longstanding push-and-pull between Athens and London over the legal technicalities of what constitutes rightful ownership and what museum press-officers prefer to euphemistically call acquisition is being reframed.'

Dan also feels that 'matters came to a head this fall, on September 28, when a resolution about the return of the Marbles came before UNESCO’s Return and Restitution Intergovernmental Committee (ICPRCP). The British rhetoric that the British Museum “is a world museum” sounded tired coming after the elegant claim by professor Nikos Stampolidis, the newly-elected Director-General of the Acropolis Museum, that “the return of the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece is a universal demand.”

The newly elected Director-General of the Acropolis Museum, Professor Nikos Stampolidis in the Parthenon Gallery, Athens, Greece.

'The committee’s concluding decision stated that “the obligation to return the Parthenon Sculptures lies squarely” on the U.K. government and expressed “disappointment” with the U.K.’s position. The group called on the nation “to reconsider its stand and proceed to a bonafide dialog with Greece on the matter.”

This was swiftly followed by Kyriakos Mitsotakis London visit on 16 November 2021 and his eloquent request for reunification made on breakfast TV and at 10 Downing Street, plus the Science Museum. Janet Suzman, BCRPM's Chair wrote: 'Sometimes fairy tales come true: I never thought to see the stunning coverage given to the Parthenon Marbles by two leading right-wing newspapers, The Mail and The Telegraph.' To read her article follow the link here.

Just last week on 08 December 2021, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution (supported by 111 countries) introduced by Greece entitled: “Return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin”.

Dan Hicks concludes that 'predictions are always risky, and as an archaeologist I confess that the future is technically not my period of expertise. Nonetheless, in this new cultural, internationalist, and intellectual atmosphere, it’s hard to believe that the Parthenon Marbles won’t have been reunited in Athens by the end of the decade.' To read the full article on arnet, follow the link here.

Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford. His latest book, The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution is now out in paperback. Twitter: @ProfDanHicks

This event was a panel discussion about the cultural repatriation of national treasures, inspired by the current status of the Parthenon Marbles.The event was held at the LSE by the Hellenic Observatory.

The debate over the reunification of the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles remains newsworthy. With attention post the Black Lives Matter protests signalling initiatives taken to return national treasures to their countries of origin, the campaign continues. For the Marbles, the British Museum has signalled a willingness to consider 'a deal', and the Greek Prime Minister highlighted Greece's willingness to discuss this further. He was due to visit the UK next month and have talks with UK's PM, although he did try to do this when Mr Johnson was PM too, gaining the support of UK audiences with his appearance on ITV's Good Morning Britain,16 November, 2021.

The panel that spoke on 18 October, considered the implications of reuniting the Marbles back to Athens and the issues that would arise should such a maganimous act take place any time soon.

Listen to Professor Paul Cartledge, BCRPM and the IARPS's Vice-Chair, alongside Ed Vaizey Chair of a new campaign the 'Parthenon Project', and Dr Tatiana Flessas, Associate Professor in Cultural Heritage and Property Law at the LSE. You can also revisit the talk that Dr Flessas gave on 09 October 2019 at the seminar held at the City of London University alongside BCRPM's Oliver Taplin, Jonathan Jones from the Guardian and Dr Florian Schmidt-Gabain, Attorney, Zurich, Lecturer in Art Law, Universities of Basel and Zurich.

Whichever side of the fence you may be sitting by, there is no doubt that the compelling moral and ethical reasons for reunificaton are as strong today as they were in June 2009, when the Acropolis Museum was opened. Considering also that the first request was made when Greece became indepependent, a request by the morden state of Greece to the UK, nearly two centuries ago.

Greece's requests have never waned garnering greater impetus through UNESCO's ICPRCP also. Yet the BM have remained firm in not wanting to reunite the marbles, that is up until this summer, when the new Chair of the British Museum Trustees, George Osborne suggested to Andrew Marr on LBC that a 'deal' could be made. This deal rests on Greece accepting to share half of the surviving, fragmented sculptures, and would be formalised as a loan agreement that would enable parts of the sculptures to travel back and forth with fragmented pieces currently held in the Acropolis Museum doing the same. With over 100,000 Greek artefacts in the BM, surely there are other exemplars to display in Room 18 which might allow Greece's justifiable request to be met with magnanimity, understanding and empathy? And let's also not forget that since Greek Minister of Culture Evangelos Venizelos in 2000 visited the BM, Greece pledged that should the Parthenon sculptures be returned, the Greek Government would make sure that the Duveen Galleries would always host Greek antiquities on loan for exhibitions. Greece would be willing to send rare and even newly discovered antiquities, which have never been seen outside Greece. This Greek offer has been repeated, and most recently by PM Mitsotakis when he was last in London.

Martin Bailey wrote in The Art Newspaper on Wednesday, 10 May 2023, revealing declassified UK government documents showed the Foreign Office had been dismissive of the British Museum’s lobbying to retain the Parthenon Marbles in 1983. The year when a formal claim was first lodged, after Greece's then Greek culture minister, Melina Mercouri visited London and the British Museum. 

'The Foreign Office recorded that Mercouri argued that the Marbles “are an integral part of a monument that represents the national spirit of Greece”. Wilson responded that they are part of a museum which is a unique international institution that “should not be dismembered”. But the officials concluded that Mercouri “won the argument hands down”.'

Fast forward four decades, and the argument for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles is as compeling today as it has been since the 19th century, and the first request made by Greece after gaining independence. 

Janet Suzman, BCRPM's Chair often speaks of what Melina was like when she first met her in London. "Melina was electric, she swept through Britain in the 80's and captured the hearts and minds of all those that understood the injustice of the removal of these sculptures, their sale to the government by Lord Elgin in 1816, plus their continued display in the British Museum as art pieces, not as a collection of peerless sculptures that will always be intrinsically connected to the Parthenon. A building, which after two and half millennia of history, wars and occupations, still stands proud on the Sacred Hill.

"We could be informed how exactly these stone figures came to be here in this cold gallery in London" suggests Janet Suzman. "Since no proof from the Ottoman Sultanate has yet been found permitting them to be taken from Greece, we could, at the very least, be told that fact. Otherwise we must assume the British Museum has a very tenuous hold on reality when it claims they were legitimately acquired."

"The BCRPM wants to see visitors to the British Museum enlightened, either by a leaflet made available in the Greek galleries, or cogent signage on the plinths themselves, with full information about their acquisition."

"The modern Hellenic Republic, free of the yoke of the Ottomans, desperately wants its cultural heritage - these perticular Parthenon scuptures - returned. For over two hundred years it has wanted them returned. The public deserves to know why; Lord Elgin chopped them off the Parthenon and stole them, silently and clandestinely, and they ought to be back in their own place, where the sun shines." Concludes Janet Suzman.

'In the name of fairness and morality' said Melina in 1986 'please give them back. Such a gesture from Great Britain would ever honour your name'.