Author: AFP. http://www.independent.co.uk

Like the victory goddess it honours, Athens' ancient Temple of Athena Nike stands free of scaffolding for the first time in nine years in a testament to another triumph - the prolific restoration of the Acropolis.

Greece may be struggling to ward off financial collapse but nothing will crush the ambitious plan - first started in 1975 - to restore Classical glory to the country's most visited monument.

The government vowed in May to press ahead with the drive to restore the landmark despite making deep budget cuts to battle its debt crisis. Even paycuts for the restoration team haven't dampened their determination to see it through.

"People have lower salaries as everybody in Greece today, but working here is a privilege and we have to keep our enthusiasm," said Mary Ioannidou, an engineer who spent 35 years of her life working on the site and today heads the Acropolis Restoration Service[http://www.ysma.gr/en/].

Yet another round of restoration started in January, this latest to last three years. The EU has already sunk millions of euros into the painstaking work and will finance 80 percent of the 12 million-euro budget (16 million dollars) for the new phase.

Whatever the crisis, "the Greek state never stops to take care of this monument," Ioannidou told AFP. "EU funds never stop; it's a symbol not only for Greece but for all European civilisation.

"It's a monument devoted to Western civilsation," she said.

The exquisite Temple of Athena Nike, on a rise flanking the entrance to the 5th-century BC citadel that towers over the capital, once again dazzles after nearly a decade hidden from view. Its pure Ionic columns support now-complete porticos that cut a fine angle against the deep blue sky. Only its walls hint at change - where bright new blocks of marble contrast with the centuries-old patina on original stones.

"We don't want to cheat, that's why we use this new marble, so that everybody can understand which is original and which is not," said Ioannidou, as jackhammers blare in the background.

The small temple's scaffolding came down in September at the start of a brief pause in restoration. Two months later, scaffolding was back up, this time on part of the Propylaea, a huge, semi-ruined gateway that served as the entrance to the Acropolis, and the celebrated Parthenon, the temple to Athena, protector of Athens.

The culture ministry plans to hire 50 more archaeologists, architects, stone masons and other artisans in the coming weeks, which would bring the restoration team to 200.

"Human interventions are our biggest enemy," said Ioannidou.

Damage came from many sources - transformation of temples into churches or mosques, bombings, demolition during the Ottomon empire, fires and notably what Ioannidou called bad restoration work in the early 20th century.

While the ancient Greeks took care to cover with lead the iron rods that link blocks of marble, early 20th-century restorers used ordinary, unprotected iron. "The iron elements rusted, expanded and caused a lot of damage," she said.

Today, modern materials are used, notably corrosion-resistant titanium, and the team's methods have become a reference point. "We have archaeologists coming from all over the world, we even had visitors from Korea where they used our methodology to restore some ancient stone pagodas," said Ioannidou.

Pollution and acid rain have also been a problem. Some sculptures and artefacts have been replaced on site with reproductions and the originals put in the ultra-modern Acropolis Museum that opened at the foot of the citadel in 2009.

Among these are the famous Caryatids, columns sculpted as females holding up the roof of a porch on the southern side of the Erectheum temple, and the frieze from the Temple of Athena Nike.

Six huge metopes, or square spaces on a frieze, from the west side of the Parthenon will also be replaced by copies.

The museum already already houses part of the Parthenon's priceless Elgin Marbles - with other fragments in the British Museum in London, a sore point between the two capitals. Greece has stepped up pressure on London in recent years to return the fragments, which it says were illegally removed in 1806 by British ambassador Lord Elgin when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire.

For Italian architect Constantin Karanassos, who has worked on the Acropolis for the last decade, "contemporary architects still have a lot to learn from the perfection of this construction.

"The ancient Greeks used their head and their eyes to measure 'optical accuracy' that today we rely on computers to do," he said.

http://www.theswordofzeus.info/

Writer N.J. Slabbert, creator of the Sword Of Zeus Project on the role of Greece in WWII, has urged Britain to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens without further delay to honour Greeks who fell in the war.

While the return of the Marbles has been supported on general ethical and cultural grounds by other public intellectuals including Nobel Prizewinning author Nadine Gordimer and journalist Christopher Hitchens, N.J. Slabbert says the critical role that Greece played in WWII provides a very specific historical reason to return the Marbles now. He sets this position out in his forthcoming book The Sword Of Zeus: The Hidden Story Of How Greece Shaped World War II.

THE SWORD OF ZEUS TM Project is a new multimedia initiative which focuses new light on the extraordinary story of Greece’s heroic role in WWII and examines the Western world's complicated relationship with Hellenism. Created by award-winning writer N.J. Slabbert, The Sword of ZeusTM Project has been described by Greek-American industrialist Aris Melissaratos as "a major Hellenic event".

BRING THE ELGIN MARBLES HOME.

The Elgin Marbles stand in London, lit with honor, cared for, deeply loved.

And yet they are not home.

Wrenched from Athens long ago, they radiate the light of ancient Greece; a lamp undimmed by years.

And yet they are not home.

In Athens only will they not be Elgin’s.

If stone had voice these wonderworks would beg their keepers for

release, to be returned at last to where their makers lived and dwelt

and died.

There is no place on earth for them but Athens.

Are they not the living bone of Athens?

And Athens is a city made of bone.

As oceans speak from shells, so bone can whisper well of distant

deeps. Just so from Athens science and philosophy drew forth their

vast anatomies of thought, of brooding speculation, of every hand that reached up high to trace in heaven: “Why?”

And yet: the Elgin Marbles are not home.

In Athens rose the Western spine: assemblies of the people out of

which grew reasoned discourse. Millennia would pass and still the

richness of this marrow would persist.

In Jefferson. In Washington. In Franklin, Lincoln, Martin Luther King.

And yet: the Elgin Marbles are not home.

In the swastika years, Athenians became a people of bones. And those who stood against the horde would fall before the guns. In streets. In fields. In mud. In blood. On hills that Plato’s sandals might have trod.

To bones they went. And not for Greece alone.

They cannot dream, those ones who lie in dust. So let us dream for

them and, dreaming, do.

The year is now. The hour is come.

Please. Send the Elgin Marbles home.

Author: ANA-MPA

Starting on Jan. 28 this year, the New Acropolis Museum will henceforth stay open until 10 p.m. on Friday evenings so that visitors can tour the exhibits while also viewing the floodlit Acropolis -- opposite the museum -- at night.

At the same time, the museum will also begin a programme for the conservation and restoration of the Caryatid sculptures - structural columns holding up the temple's porch that were carved to look like young women - from the Erechtheum.

The programme includes using laser tools to clean the sculptures from atmospheric pollution and remove factors causing damage, affix less secure areas of the marble and restore their structure. The museum has chosen not to move them from the gallery during the process, in order to avoid the strain of an additional move.

It also hopes to allow visitors to get first-hand experience of procedures that until now took place in inaccessible laboratories. (ANA-MPA)

Author: Trevor Timpson BBC News online

05 January 2010

Greek calls for the UK to return the Parthenon Marbles, nearly 200 years after they were removed from the Acropolis and shipped to London, have a new advocate leading the battle in the UK.

Former MP Eddie O'Hara, the new chairman of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), has told the BBC News website he is optimistic the campaign for the British Museum to return the sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles, will succeed.

However a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said government policy remained unchanged, and that there were no plans to return the Marbles to Greece.

As a Labour MP from 1990 to 2010, Mr O'Hara was the "anchor man" for the BCRPM in Parliament.
"We did have a number of more or less fruitful meetings with ministers," he says. "Certainly under the Labour government there were a number of ministers who were hugely sympathetic."

But he was never able to get past the "Keepers of the Gate" - civil servants advising the ministers - says Mr O'Hara.

He believes things may have been different if Neil Kinnock had become prime minister in 1992. "That would probably have been the best chance that we had," he says, because the Labour leader was known to be strongly in favour of returning the Marbles.

On the spot

The 1997 Labour government's speedy announcement that the Marbles would not be returned was "a catastrophe", says Mr O'Hara.

He believes members of the incoming government were doorstepped by Greek journalists and put on the spot too quickly, making it impossible for them to overturn the existing departmental line.

"That set us back," says Mr O'Hara. He told Tony Blair that sending back the Marbles would "redound tremendously to the UK's credit" but failed to convince the prime minister who went on to serve for 10 years.

He adds: "Tony Blair had many strengths and many interests but I don't think the Marbles was one one of them."
And as for Gordon Brown? "I doubt if it crossed his radar," is Mr O'Hara's view.

Now out of Parliament, but convinced that public opinion is moving constantly in his favour, Eddie O'Hara, 73, believes the British Museum has few arguments left to defend its retention of the Marbles.

"The BM Trustees shelter behind the argument that it is the law - that they are entrusted with these artefacts and cannot divest themselves of them," he says. "But the government simply needs to legislate to say 'yes, this is possible'."

Greece stepped up the heat two years ago with the opening of the new Acropolis Museum, which includes a space for all the surviving Acropolis sculptures to be displayed in their original order, with the Parthenon temple clearly visible through the gallery's glass walls.

"There's only one place on earth where you can have a simultaneous visual and aesthetic experience of the Parthenon and the sculptures, and that's in that gallery," says Mr O'Hara.

Eddie O'Hara rejects argument that sending the sculptures back would "open the floodgates" and lead to large numbers of exhibits being returned from world-famous museums to their places of origin.

Instead, he believes the Marbles present a unique case: "There really aren't a lot of examples of Unesco world heritage monuments, integral components of which are in the wrong place."

Nor does Mr O'Hara accept the newer argument, advanced particularly by British Museum director Neil MacGregor, that his is a "universal" museum in which exhibits such as the Marbles are part of a wider narrative of civilisation.

"The British Museum can situate the achievements of these Greek sculptures in the context of the wider world," Mr Macgregor has said.

But Eddie O'Hara counters: "It does seem to me a bit rich that the Marbles should be made to serve the purpose of exemplars in a narrative which is an artificial construct.

"There's a narrative that has a stronger claim to these artefacts - It's the narrative of the Parthenon, which is told in the new Acropolis Museum."

The attitude of the government will be decisive in the end, Mr O'Hara believes.

The British Museum's Parthenon Marbles are among its best-known exhibits.

The Greek and UK governments are both overwhelmed with economic problems at present, he believes. But when the waters become less choppy, he is hopeful that progress can be made.

David Cameron, Mr O'Hara says, has a "sharp eye for a public relations opportunity". And Nick Clegg is on record as backing the return of the Marbles. He is also optimistic that with a future Labour government "we can push the case".

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the previous government's position was that the Marbles would not be returned to Greece, and the current coalition government feels the same way.

A department spokesman said what happens to the sculptures was a matter for the British Museum trustees, who operate independently of the government and are free from political interference.

He added that under the museum's governing statute (the British Museum Act, 1963 - a law which the government has no plans to change) the trustees are prevented from giving away objects unless they are duplicates or unfit for keeping.

However Mr O'Hara is pressing ahead with plans to call a meeting of the BCRPM, and among the topics to be discussed will be new methods of communication. The role of petitions on the government website will be a "very important" topic, he says.

What about the "Keepers of the Gate"? Well, says Mr O'Hara, if they are civil servants in the culture department, they have to be sensitive to what is going on culturally - and public opinion on many fronts (if people are aware) says 'Yes, of course they should go back'."

As far as the British Museum trustees are concerned, "They are defending a case which we regard as very difficult to defend - and we should make them defend it."

The Parthenon Marbles
• Friezes and pediment figures which decorated the Parthenon temple in Athens, built 447-432 BC.
• Many were removed by agents of the British diplomat Lord Elgin in the early 19th century, and eventually sold to the British Museum.
• Most of the surviving sculptures are roughly equally divided between London and Athens.
• Greece has repeatedly demanded that the British Museum marbles be returned to Athens.
• The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, formed in 1983, supports the Greek demand.
• Athens' new Acropolis Museum opened in 2009. It is designed to display all the surviving sculptures, in their original layout.

Author: BBC News online


Museums in London are being urged to get more of their collections out of storage and on display as funding cuts will mean fewer landmark exhibitions.

Many museums in the capital keep more than 90% of their collections stored away.

The Museums Association says despite the current economic climate it wants to challenge venues to offer more to the public.

The government says national museums will face a funding cut of 15%.

A BBC Freedom of Information request found the British Museum had spent £86,280 in 2009 and 2010 keeping 99% of its collection in storage.

The Natural History Museum spent £45,928 on storage space for 95% of its specimen collections.

The Tate (Modern, Britain, St Ives and Liverpool) expects to spend £465,500 on storage by the end of the financial year and the National Maritime Museum spent £142,361 in 2010.

The Wallace Collection, under the terms of the bequest from Lady Wallace, cannot loan out or keep works stored off-site.

Unparalleled collection

The Imperial War Museum reduced its storage costs in 2010 from £8,731 to £3,351 and the National Gallery and the Science Museum (not including subsidiary museums outside London) do not hire any storage space for their collections but do have objects out of view.

Sally Cross, of the Museums Association, said the venues had some of the country's most valuable collections and so it was important they "take great care" of them.

"Some of the material is quite vulnerable such as paper drawings, textiles and costumes. They can be damaged if on display for a long time.

"With budget cuts it's harder to put on temporary exhibitions and they cost a lot so we'll probably see fewer blockbuster exhibitions, but I hope museums can use their stored collections to fill those gaps and refresh what they offer to the audience."

Vulnerable material

A statement from the British Museum said it "maintains a large collection of objects from across the globe from two million years ago to the present day".

"The preservation of this unparalleled collection for current and future generations is a key purpose of the British Museum, we therefore make the safety and security of our storage facilities a paramount aim."

Angela Doane, director of collections at the National Maritime Museum, said it spent £142, 361 on storing 93% of its 4,000 paintings and 70,000 prints and drawings because so much of it was fragile.

"They can't be placed on permanent display but they are very good for temporary changing exhibitions and they are always available through museum archives and special appointments."

She said the museum was soon to open a new library and archive facility which would triple the amount of material available to see.