Stuart O'Hara

  • “History has a Face” – Portraits of Greek Revolutionaries by Benjamin Mary at the Greek Embassy, Holland Park, London

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    These portraits, which have already been displayed in Athens at the National Museum courtesy of the Sylvia Ioannou foundation, were drawn between 1839 and 1844 by Benjamin Mary, the first Belgian Ambassador in Greece. Though Prof Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at KCL, reckoned these pictures were of “more ethnographic interest than artistic merit” in her pithy, entertaining presentation, the drawings of Makrygiannis, Kolokotronis, Hadjipetrou et al are real portraits. Their sitters look battle-weary, surely from both their revolutionary escapades and the Greek party political maelstrom that followed (one which Mary failed to navigate, leading to his being recalled to Paris on ‘sick leave’). They look old, their piercing stares not solely attributable to Mary’s heavy-handedness with the charcoal. But their traditional dress is vibrant, defiant, and lived in – not the pristine off-the-shelf number Byron wears in Thomas Phillips’ portrait of 1813.

    Among the Hellenes sits the Glaswegian George Finlay, smoking a narghile. Alasdair Grant of the University of Edinburgh gave an overview of Finlay’s career as a political intermediary in the early years of independent Greece and as the first English-language historian of her last thousand years. Should any of you be up in Edinburgh, there is an exhibition at the University, Edina/Athina: The Greek Revolution and the Athens of the North, curated by Dr Grant, which runs until January 2022. Dr Jennifer Wallace of Peterhouse College, Cambridge gave a talk bursting at the seams with the complexity of the Greek independence movement, Philhellenism in Great Britain, Byron’s aptitude for proto-branding, and the modern faces of history – the diverse populace of 21st Century Greece and its status as one of the easternmost points of arrival into Europe for migrants and refugees.

    Finally, actor Angeliki Petropetsioti gave readings from the memoirs of Kolokotronis and Makrigiannis. The former included a moving account of a last-minute stay of execution, but it was through the latter’s plain demotic prose (and Petropesioti’s vivd delivery) that the strongest sense of personality came. Among the military strategizing and political wrangling emerged the following passage, relevant to BCRPM’s interests, which dates from the 1850s and describes an event in the early 1830s:

    Είχα δυο αγάλματα περίφημα, μια γυναίκα κι’ ένα βασιλόπουλο ατόφια – φαίνονταν οι φλέβες· τόση εντέλειαν είχαν. Όταν χάλασαν τον Πόρον, τα ’χαν πάρη κάτι στρατιώτες και εις τ’ Άργος θα τα πουλουύσαν κάτι Ευρωπαίων· χίλια τάλλαρα γύρευαν. Άντεσε κ’ εγώ εκεί, πέρναγα· πήρα τους στρατιώτες, τους μίλησα· «Αυτά και δέκα χιλιάδες τάλλαρα να σας δώσουνε, να μην το καταδεχτήτε να βγουν από την πατρίδα μας. Δι’ αυτά πολεμήσαμεν»

    I had two wonderful statues, a woman and a young prince, intact – you could see their veins, they were so perfect. When they sacked Poros, some soldiers had taken them and were going to sell them in Argos to some Europeans; they were asking for one thousand talara… I took the soldiers aside and spoke to them: ‘Even if they give you ten thousand talara, don’t allow for these statues to leave our homeland. These are what we fought for.’ (Memoirs of General Makriyiannis 1797-1864 (II/303), ed. & trans. H.A. Lidderdale, London: OUP, 1966).

     

    Suart O'Hara 

     

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    Stuart O' Hara with Angeliki Petropetsioti and Consul Christos Goulas at the event held at the Greek Embassy, on Tuesday 26 October 2021.

  • BCRPM member Stuart O'Hara attended online, the 4 hour long Policy Exchange, History Matters Conference, on Tuesday 02 March 2021 and summed it up below.

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    It’s said that the most important decisions at conferences are made in the coffee breaks. But how so over Zoom? The liveliest discussions by far at thePolicy Exchange’s History Matters Conference took place in the delegates’ chat. Questions fielded were rehearsed there, but there was a parallel and, in the case of the first panel, far more diverse dialogue taking place, not restricted to breaks between sessions. How would this play out in the real world? Would the frequently eloquent delegates have steered the panel, or would they have tempered their contributions? Most curiously, would those whose questions were not chosen (some of which were, of course, more of a statement) have protested as much at their not receiving the mic? It was later revealed that the chat window was not visible to the panels.

    PANEL 1: STATUES AND THE PUBLIC SPACE
    Chair: Peter Ainsworth (Chair, The Heritage Alliance)
    Sir Laurie Magnus(Chair, Historic England)
    Dr Zareer Masani(Historian and author)
    Prof Evelyn Welch (KCL Interim President & Principal Jan-June 2021)

    A panel far too much in agreement with itself, according to delegates! That said, there were pertinent contributions, such as Prof Welch’s explanation that the targeted statue of Sir Thomas Guy (and its plinth) is the property of Guy’s Hospital Trust, the base and railings that of KCL, and the whole grade II listed – a complexity not dissimilar to the pas de deux between the BM Trustees’ and the government’s custody of the Marbles. The apportioning of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem also came to mind, though perhaps that’s not a useful model if an outcome is sought in the foreseeable future. It was pointed out that the world beyond Bristol knows Edward Colston far better since his statue came down – there is a parallel here, I think, with the phenomenon that the general public, upon introduction to the Marbles debate, tend to favour reunification.

    PANEL 2: MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES
    Chair: Nicholas Coleridge CBE (Chair, V&A)
    Sir Ian Blatchford(Director, Science Museum Group)
    Dr Laura van Broekhoven(Director, Pitt Rivers Museum)
    Sharon Heal (Director, Museums Association)
    Dr Samir Shah CBE (Chair, Museum of the Home)

    This was more like it. A broader panel, and with it a good deal more spirit in answering how museums and galleries should respond to and remain representative of their public. The Science Museum’s Ian Blatchford distinguished between ‘shared’ and ‘contested’ heritage, the former being preferable and more harmonious, in theory. But surely Britain’s colonial history creates a hegemony which makes contest necessary en route to any possible sharing of heritage? Sharon Heal, of the Museums Association, dissected the current governmental stance of ‘retain and explain’, saying that museums are already very good at the latter, but that retain, as a starting point, hampers their mission. This report could have consisted solely of quotations from Dr Shah, but his most incisive question must suffice: who are we listening to? Visitors? Parents? Academics? Politicians? No answer came forth.

    A lot of this is only peripheral to the question of the Parthenon Marbles, granted, but as the Marbles stated the ‘original’ debate on contentious statuary in this country, we’d be fools not to keep abreast, and present our arguments in light of, what’s going on. Indeed, it came to mind more than once that several key points from our reunificationist arguments, specifically the distinction between cultural(/ethnic) and national(/political) identity, would be useful additions to the vocabulary of the cultural heritage issues currently having their moment. Furthermore, the Marbles are a (post)colonial issue, taken from one occupied imperial territory by the official representative of another empire. There was little talk of reunification. That’s unsurprising given ‘retain and explain’, but it sat awkwardly with the general agreement on the return of Benin Bronzes and withdrawing human remains from display (the latter are something quite different from our concerns, of course).

    IN CONVERSATION
    Rt Hon Oliver Dowden MP (Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)
    Pa OBE (Chair, Policy Exchange’s History Matters Project)

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    I had modest hopes for Mr Dowden, a minister who I’m led to believe actually reads his brief, but sadly he turned in a rather predictable sequence of soundbites about “honouring our rich culture/heritage/history”, “not preserving history in aspic” (three times!), a swipe at post-war architecture, and references to an anonymous “left …holding universities/museums to ransom”. By the time he assured us that Nelson was in no danger of leaving his Column, in response to a rather facetious question from Trevor Phillips, it all felt a bit silly. To his credit the word ‘woke’ (long since divorced from its original meaning) never passed his lips, despite the odd mention earlier in the afternoon. Perhaps it was too much to expect a member of government to issue anything other than the party line of ‘conserve/retain and explain’. A reference to “strong societies” not airbrushing their history left an unpleasant taste (of self-righteous colonialism) in the mouth, though probably not that of the right honourable gentleman.

    Only two questions from delegates were put to the Minister, one by an articulate young woman asking what the government does to represent those not represented by the status quo or by campaign groups. His answer warned about the presence of subversive elements (‘activists’) in campaign groups, so perhaps it’s too much to hope that fielding the Marbles question would have yielded a useful answer - but it was a shame not to have the opportunity to ask. There were countless mentions of ‘constructive/rigorous debate’ this afternoon, but in the current cultural moment that all -too -often means giving non-mainstream views a brief airing, and then continuing exactly as before. As Trevor Phillips asked, “Have you got the stomach for this kind of fight? Because what governments tend to do is wrap up in a warm blanket and walk away”. No answer came forth.

    Toward the end, Phillips said “[History Matters] would hope… to get away from people using history as a combat weapon”. Keeping abreast of current trends and mores in museology and cultural heritage is essential in our campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, and I believe we do that pretty well. If there’s a desire to avoid the (unwarranted) weaponization of history, and the wind may be blowing that way, I believe that’s a vindication of our use of well-researched arguments and of the collaborative nature of our proposed solutions down the years. But when we do get to have our say, when the debate is over, things can’t just continue as before.

    To contact Stuart, kindly visit his website here.

  • Sunday, 18 June 2023 at 16:00 in the Parthenon Galleries of the British Museum acclaimed actors Bill Nighy and Simon Callow CBE; TV presenter and journalist Baroness Joan Bakewell; Stockard Channing, whose screen credits range from Grease to The West Wing; Anna Savva, the Anglo-Greek actress memorable in The Durrells, and Janet Suzman DBE, Chair of the BCRPM, read Byron's 'The Curse of Minerva'. This was the first time that this 212-year-old poemwas read in the British Museum's Room 18. Alexi Kaye Campbell, playwright and member of the Committee, was MC and introduced the readers, paid tribute to the Acropolis Museum and reminded us that Byron's poem contnues to have relevance today.

    The Ham and High and London's Local News published the event.

    On Sunday, the UK correspondents for Skai Greece, Thanasis Gavos and ERT's Nastasia Kantzavelou also attended, with special thanks to both Philippos and Andriana Kantzavelou for holding up the banner! Coverage also in Ta Nea by Yannis Andritsopoulos. 

    Photos from the event below, courtesy of David Wilkinson,Gillian Boll, Stuart O'Hara and Marlen Godwin:

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  • 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 firmans 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

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    Image copyright Matthew Johnson (2018)

     

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