Friday 01 July 2016, 18.30–20.00 @ British Museum's BP Lecture Theatre a 'special event' for the 200th year anniversary of the British Museum’s acquisition of the Elgin collection.

Chaired by Curator Ian Jenkins, British Museum, panellists include David Bindman, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at UCL, Athena Leoussi, Associate Professor in European History at the University of Reading, and author and historian Dominic Selwood. Introduced by Lesley Fitton, Keeper of the Department of Greece and Rome, British Museum.

And a reminder to Dominic Selwood that if he believes Lord Elgin 'saved the Parthenon marbles' - BCRPM's response is as follows:

1. Whether or not Elgin "rescued" the Parthenon Marbles, that is no excuse for holding on to them now;

2. The Greeks fought their war of independence in the name of Hellenism, a concept and a spirit preserved and transmitted through their language throughout centuries of conquests and occupations;

3. The Parthenon is a monument of unique significance not just for Greece but for western civilisation;

4. The Parthenon is a fixed monument and it is in Greece;

5. The sculptures are integral architectural elements of it;

6. Both the Parthenon and it's other sculpted elements lack artistic integrity while they are separated;

7. Admittedly, the sculptures can no longer be re fixed to the Parthenon or indeed displayed anywhere in the open. However in the glass walled Parthenon Gallery of the magnificent Acropolis Museum, glassed walled and in line of sight of the Parthenon, and only there, they can be viewed simultaneously with the building to which they belong. Thus the case for reunification of the Parthenon marbles is not a legal one about rights of ownership, current or historic, but cultural and ethical. The onus of justification should be on those who resist restoring the integrity of the sculptures from the Parthenon - the Parthenon a UNESCO World Heritage monument, the very emblem of UNESCO itself.

The popular Athens String Quartet presents two works that, almost a century apart, opened new horizons for this particular composition of music. The focus is on two youthful compositions, starting with the string quartet in G minor by the impressionist Claude Debussy and closing with the string quartet no. 1 in F major by Beethoven.

The Athens String Quartet includes: Apollon Grammatikopoulos (violin), Panagiotis Tziotis (violin), Angela Giannaki (viola), Isidoros Sideris (cello).

TICKET INFORMATION: Due to limited availability, to secure a place at this musical event, an online reservation can be made at events.theacropolismuseum.gr 

The event includes a short tour of the exhibition areas with an Archaeologist of the Museum at 19:30  and the musical event will begin at 20:30in the Parthenon Gallery, the museum's top floor gallery.

A reminded that on Monday 01 April 2024 the Museum's summer opening hours begin (01 April – 31 October: Monday 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday 9:00 a.m. - 20:00 p.m., and Friday 9:00 a.m. - 22:00 p.m.).

Letter from Chair of BCRPM, Dame Janet Suzman to the Financial Times in response to Sir Richard Lambert's review of Geoffrey Robertson's newly launched book 'Returning Plundered Treasure'. To read the review by Sir Lambert, please follow the link to the FT here. 

Sir Lambert's review ends on a well reheared note: " the trustees are driven by the conviction that the collection is a public good of inestimable value, which it is their duty to conserve and share as widely as possible." One has to wonder if Sir Lambert doesn't believe that the Acropolis Museum's Parthenon Galleryhas such a conviction and that it is here, in Athens that visitors view all of the surviving sculptures (including the casts bought by Greece from the British Museum) facing the right way round and with direct views to the Parthenon, a building that still stands.

Sir Lambert concludes his review by stating that we all own history, indeed we all do but when we have a unique opportunity to put together halves of one peerless collection as close as possible to the building they were once an integral part of, all those thousands of years ago, surely the onus is on all of us to do just that. Respect for cultural heritage of a World Heritage site is key here too. 

RE: Returning Plundered Treasure 

I am offering, if I may, a very simple request which we would like to make to Sir Richard Lambert, who is Chairman of the British Museum, and that is to please reconsider his case for retaining the Parthenon marbles. After two hundred years, when circumstances have so radically changed in the country of origin, that stubborn retention seems wilful, wounding, and unfounded. There may not be faultless legal reasons for returning them, but there are surely humanistic and moral ones that should now come in to play?

The great new Acropolis Museum, which stands directly opposite the Parthenon itself, celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. It longs with all its heart and soul, to re-unite the two halves of the pedimental sculptures, frieze and metopes from that bedraggled but proud building, one half there and the other in the Duveen Gallery in Bloomsbury. 

Why on earth is there no constructive debate about these unique objects? As I understand it, there are no other pieces on display in the BM chopped off a building from the ancient world that is still standing? As I understand it there is no half of a major work in the BM’s collection awaiting re-unification with its other half? As I understand it, there is no major museum in the world that was expressly built to house its incomplete central collection - resolutely thwarted by the BM.

We know it is a noble stance to honour the founding intentions of the BM, which is to display the world to the world, but the quoted numbers that swarm through the BM do not take account of those visitors who simply don't get to the Duveen Galleries, as there are such rich offerings in other departments. Millions swarm through the Acropolis Museum at Athens too, you know, who would be moved and enlightened by seeing where the London marbles ought to be and are not.

Some day Sir Richard Lambert and the great Museum he represents must surely see that its intransigence in the matter of the Parthenon sculptures is way out of date. Colonial plunder is being re-assessed by all major museums. The heavens will not fall were they returned home. On the contrary, the stars will sing in their spheres if the BM resolved, after two hundred years, to make a generous gesture in regard to the only ancient building representing the West's entire political and ethical mind-set still exerting its power from its rock. The great neo-classical facade of the BM itself, entirely inspired by the Parthenon, could then bedeck itself with flags of altruistic joy.

Yours most sincerely,
Dame Janet Suzman DBE
Chair of The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles

British Museum, Room 18, The Parthenon Galleries, at 16:07,  after the voices of the women of Troy had concluded their stories, readings from a novel 'A thousand Ships' by Natalie Haynes,part of Project Season Women, directed by Magdalena Zira and Athina Kasiou, Professor Edith Hall unfurled a flag with a heartfelt request: Reunite the Parthenon Marbles.

A team of twenty actresses from Cyprus and the UK performed readings in both English and in Greek over a period of five hours in three different locations of the British Museum.

Professor Edith Hall described the day of readings as a "grand epic gesture.... reclaiming the stories of the Trojan War" and after the readings, Edith with the help of two students, unfurled a flag with the image of the Parthenon Gallery on the top floor of the Acropolis Museum and the words: Reunite the Parthenon Marbles. To reunite the surviving sculptures from the British Museum with those in the Acropolis Museum, would be a grand epic gesture, especially as this request has been voiced by Greece since 1843. 

This year is also Melina Mercouri's year and just two Saturdays prior, during the 'BP or not BP?' protest, again in Room 18, three presentations were made to state the case for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

On this Saturday, after the staged readings from Natalie Haynes novel 'A Thousand Ships' in the context of Creative Responses to Troy, accmpanying the current exhibition Troy:myth and reality, Edith Hall added the following statement as Kitty Cooke and Lucy Bilson held up the flag:

"I have been involved in this amazing production of 'A Thousand Ships' as mentor and friend of Natalie Haynes and PhD supervisor to two of the directors, Magdalena Zira and Helen Eastman. But what I am going to say is entirely as an individual, a Professor of Classics at London University and most of all as a proud member of the BCRPM. This intervention has nothing to do with the theatre companies and actors involved today. Listening to these beautiful stories, born in the poetry of Homer in ancient Greece, I cannot pass up the opportunity to argue that these equally beautiful sculptures from ancient Greece, crow-barred and stolen from their homeland two hundred years ago, deserve to be reunited in their homeland with the total work of art that is the Athenian Parthenon. Thanks to my brave allies Kitty Cooke and Lucy Bilson, brave undergraduates studying Classics at University College London."

Photos courtesy of Sarah Pynder.

British Museum interim Director, Sir Mark Jones interviewed two weeks ago in The Times, explaining how he has dealt with the consequences of the British Museum thefts. He set a target of five years for the BM’s complete collection, eight million objects, to be catalogued online, each with an image. With 60% of the BM's objects already digitalised, this target will be met.

Ten of the recovered stolen items are to be featured in a new BM exhibition called 'Rediscovering Gems', which opens on Thursday, 15 February 2024. 

From theft of artefacts to the call for the British Museum to give back some of the contested items in its collection.

“It’s true that I find the legal situation of contested objects, and the historical justification for retaining them, much less interesting than consideration of their current and future benefits,” Jones says. "What we should really be thinking about is where these objects are going to create the most interest, where they are best going to engage people.”

We certainly concurr with that last sentence. The Parthenon Gallery in the Acropolis Museum is the one place on earth where it is possible to have a single and aesthetic experience simultaneously of the Parthenon and its sculptures. 

Read the full interview with Sir Mark Jones in the The Times.

Gareth Harris from The Art Newspaper also wrote quoting Sir Jones' response in The Times  with his reply to the question of if he were "still the BM’s director in a couple of years’ time, could he envisage supervising an arrangement to return the Elgin [Parthenon] Marbles to Greece?”

“Yes,” Jones said. “I could easily imagine a relationship between us and the Acropolis Museum [in Athens] that included mutual loans. Why not? They have some rather fabulous objects as well.”

Greece has been offering to loan antiquities to the British Museum in return for the reunification of the sculptures in Athens, for over 24 years.