An art student will dress as a Greek goddess when she becomes the latest Calderdale person to take to the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London.

Sofka Smales, 19, will use her hour on the stone stand to campaign for the Elgin Marbles to be returned from London to Athens.

She was selected at random from more than 30,000 applicants to appear on the plinth as part of Antony Gormley's One & Other project which sees a different person take to the plinth every 60 minutes for 100 days.

Miss Smales, of Park Road, Todmorden, said: "It's a fantastic project.
"At first I didn't know what I could do with my hour but I'm a quarter Greek and I lived there for nearly five years, and I've always felt the marbles should be returned – especially now that a first class museum has been built – so this was the natural choice."

Her slot, which will include a Greek band playing in the Square, will be at 11pm on Saturday.

The teenager, who is studying criticism, communication and curation at St Martins College in London, said: "It's a prime time really because there will be plenty of people about – I just hope I can get a few to take notice."

Watching back home on a live internet stream will be dad Lindsay and stepmum Hilary Myers.
Mrs Myers said: "We're going to have a party with the footage beamed live on to the living room wall."

The Elgin Marbles are ancient Greek sculptures which were originally part of the Acropolis of Athens.

They have been on display in their own wing of the British Museum for nearly 200 years but there is a growing campaign for them to be returned to the new specially-built Acropolis Museum in Athens.

Over 500,000 people visited new building in last two months

More than half a million people have visited the Acropolis Museum since it opened to the public just over two months ago, the museum's management said yesterday. More specifically, a total of 523,540 visitors have viewed the museum's exhibits since June 20. Of these, 60 percent are foreign visitors, museum officials said. During the same two-month period, 409,000 hits by different users from 180 countries were recorded by the museum's website, www.theacropolismuseum.gr.

Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Dina Titus of Nevada's Third District and a member of the Congressional Hellenic Caucus spoke on the House floor this morning to welcome the new Ambassador of Greece to the United States and congratulate Greece on the opening of the Acropolis Museum. Below are her remarks as delivered. To watch her speech on the House floor, click here.

"I rise today to welcome the new ambassador from Greece to Washington. Ambassador Vassilis Kaskarelis has a long and distinguished diplomatic career, having represented Greece at the U.N., NATO, and the E.U., among other posts.

"No doubt he will be an excellent partner as we move to strengthen Greek American relations on issues like Cyprus and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Those are example of traditional issues, but we must also focus on Greece's pivotal position in the geopolitics of the region and the new global economy.

"I also congratulate Greece on the recent opening of the spectacular Acropolis Museum. I was honored to represent President Obama and the United States at its inauguration. Built of stone from the region and bathed in natural light reflected from the nearby Aegean, it houses some of the world's greatest antiquities. Accordingly, it cries out for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum."

The contemporary facade of the new Acropolis museum, inaugurated last month after many delays, brings an ancient argument over looted Grecian artefacts back to life.

Britain used to say Athens had no adequate place to put the Elgin Marbles, the more-than-half of the Parthenon frieze that British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Lord Elgin spirited off two centuries ago. Since 1816, they have been prizes of the British Museum, while the Greeks made do with the leftovers, housed in a ramshackle museum built in 1874.

The contemporary facade of the new Acropolis museum, inaugurated last month after many delays, brings an ancient argument over looted Grecian artefacts back to life

Olympian enterprise: A view of the top floor of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, with the ancient Parthenon temple seen in the background. Greek authorities have said admission will be €1, the price of a bus ticket, till the end of the year.

In 2010, the charge will be €5. The new museum Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi has devised near the base of the Acropolis is a $200 million (around Rs978 crore), 226,000 sq. ft, state-of-the-art rebuttal to Britain's argument.

Inside the museum, it is light and airy, and the collection is a miracle. Weathered originals from the Parthenon frieze, the ones Elgin left behind, are combined with plaster casts of what's in London to fill the sun-drenched top floor of the museum, angled to mirror the Parthenon beyond, which gleams through wrap-around windows. The clash between originals and copies makes a not-subtle pitch for the return of the marbles.

On the occasion of the opening last month, Greece's culture minister Antonis Samaras said what Greek officials have been saying for decades: that the frieze, broken up, is like a family portrait with "loved ones missing". Samaras' boss, Greece's president Karolos Papoulias, spoke less metaphorically, "It's time to heal the wounds of the monument with the return of the marbles which belong to it."

This glass-wrapped gallery exhibits bits of the Parthenon to visitors alongside their original home, the Parthenon, visible through the windows. Don't bet the British will agree.
Scattered statues

Inside the museum, visitors ascend, as if up the slope of the Acropolis, via a glass ramp that reveals, underfoot, ancient remains excavated during the building's construction (they will eventually be opened to the public.) It's a nice touch. On the second floor, archaic and early classical statues mill in a big gallery like a crowd in an agora—a curatorial and architectural whimsy that risks visitors missing works such as the Kritios Boy. which is nearly hidden to one side.

Bright 'internet future' for museums could be impeded by lack of progress over Parthenon Marbles

The prospect of a technologically-driven future for museums, outlined this week by British Museum director Neil MacGregor and Tate director Nicholas Serota, could be impaired unless the issue of the Parthenon Marbles is satisfactorily resolved, says the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (www.parthenonuk.com and twitter BCRPM).

Neil MacGregor's 'real question ... how the Greek and British governments can work together so that the Parthenon sculptures can be seen in China and Africa', is quite impossible to settle without reuniting the sculptures where they belong.

"Let us have a sensible negotiation on the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures, between equals, without any prior stipulations about ownership and possession. Only then can the possibilities for the transmission of the sculptures to other countries, whether physical or virtual, be seriously discussed," commented Professor Anthony Snodgrass, Chairman for the BCRPM.

Contrary to Neil MacGregor's comment to guests at the event at the London School of Economics, that the Parthenon Marbles issue was "yesterday's question", a Guardian poll last week revealed that 94% of respondents wished to see the Marbles returned to the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.

"The Parthenon Marbles issue is very much today's question and will continue to be so until the British Museum agrees to enter into a constructive dialogue with the Greeks without constraining prior conditions," adds Dr Tom Flynn, Head of Communications for the BCRPM.

For more information or comment please contact Professor Anthony Snodgrass on 01223 313 599, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and Dr Tom Flynn on Tel: 020 8769 8261, mobile 07743 693577, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Blog: www.artknows.co.uk)

Ends: issued on behalf of the BCRPM by Marlen Taffarello, 0208 905 6703 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Cyprus House call for Marbles

The Cyprus House of Representatives has called for the return of Parthenon sculptures to Greece. In a resolution which the House plenary adopted unanimously on Thursday, Cypriot MPs called on the British government and every other competent authority of the United Kingdom to give a definite end to the adventure of the Marbles, by returning them to their natural space.

Having debated the issue of the return of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece and taking into consideration the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, the House called on all countries as well as UNESCO to renew and intensify their efforts for the return of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece "and for the reintegration of this unique element of the global cultural heritage to the natural space where it belongs".

The House expressed its deep satisfaction over the functioning of the New Acropolis Museum and congratulated the government of Greece and all others involved in its establishment.

Today it is obvious that the Marbles must be placed next to the other marbles, in their museum, next to Acropolis itself, the resolution added.

Furthermore, the House said it joined its voice "with millions of citizens in the whole world who ask for the restoration of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece."

It added that the functioning of the New Acropolis Museum, which was inaugurated on June 20, constitutes the strongest argument for the security, maintenance and exhibition of the Marbles as a single monument of cultural heritage.