THE NEW ACROPOLIS MUSEUM

published: TIME October 28, 2007

I got a preview a few days ago of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens. Any building has to accomodate its site, and for some the site can be a very delicate matter. (You've heard of the World Trade Center, no?) But I can't think of another building where the site has dictated the design as much as this one, and where the building has responded so adroitly. Then again, it's hard to think of a site that compares to this one in importance.

Actually, the Swiss-born, New York and Paris-based architect Bernard Tschumi had to answer to two demanding sites. One is the ground his museum actually rests on. Tschumi's angular design spearheads its way into a dense quarter of town at the foot of the Acropolis, a plot of land that also was also a sensitive archeological dig. No surprise, stick a spoon into the ground anywhere in Athens and you have one of those.

The other site is the one his building addresses — the Parthenon itself, about 150 ft. above the museum and 1000 ft. to the north. Tschumi's museum is a kind of polemic in glass and concrete, conceived as an argument by the Greek government to bid for the return of the Elgin marbles, the Parthenon carvings carted off to London two centuries ago by Lord Elgin and now in the possession of the British Museum.New Acropolis Museum/Bernard Tschumi -- Images: Courtesy New Acropolis Museum.

The Greeks still possess 36 of the 115 panels in the Parthenon frieze. A single long depiction of what's presumed by most scholars to be the Panathenaic procession, it once ran around the perimeter of the inner walls. They also have 39 of the 92 metopes, separate blocks that ran above the exterior colonnade and showed scenes from Greek legend. To display all this as powerfully as possible, Tschumi has provided a multi level structure around a concrete core that has the same dimensions as the perimeter of the Parthenon. The Greeks still possess 36 of the 115 panels in the Parthenon frieze. A single long depiction of what's presumed by most scholars to be the Panathenaic procession, it once ran around the perimeter of the inner walls. They also have 39 of the 92 metopes, separate blocks that ran above the exterior colonnade and showed scenes from Greek legend. To display all this as powerfully as possible, Tschumi has provided a multi level structure around a concrete core that has the same dimensions as the perimeter of the Parthenon.

You might say that the first level is the dig itself and the subterranean remains of an ancient town it uncovered. Into that delicate cavity Tschumi has gingerly introduced large concrete pilings, structural supports that allow the museum's entry plaza and first floor to hover over the site without dislodging too much of the findings below. Wide expanses of glass cut into the floor at several places allow visitors to look down into the ruins as they move into the museum.

The palette everywhere is steel and concrete gray, with mostly bare walls and blunt columns — Modernism speaking to its Classical roots at their most austere, but without simply reproducing the rectangulars of a temple. In fact the next two levels have trapezoidal floors for the lobby, shop and restaurant and for galleries that will hold artifacts from the Mycenean period to the early fifth century B.C., just before the Parthenon was begun.

What all of this amounts to of course is a complicated processional space that prepares you for the uppermost gallery, glass walled on all four sides, that will hold the frieze tablets and metopes. As I realized when I visited the Parthenon later the same day and again the next, your initial movements through the museum will subtly recall the walk up the Acropolis slope to the Parthenon at the top, one that nearly all visitors to the museum will also have made.

On the northern side of the glass walled galleries you can look up to the Parthenon and see the southern face from which Elgin stripped nearly all of the metopes that he managed to get. On the wall behind you, the remaining frieze panels and metopes will be organized in long lines that reproduce their original positions on the temple. The marbles that are in London will be represented in the appropriate positions along side them by copies covered with a fine mesh. These will be placed beside the marbles that the Greeks still possess, both to sustain the narrative continuity of the frieze, and of course, to serve as constant reminders of what's missing. It's here that Tschumi mustered his simplest means into his most well considered and powerful effect. The museum as optical device, the optical device as polemic.

Back outside, Tschumi's museum is also satisfying in the way of certain startlingly modern buildings inserted into old European city fabrics. Standing on the plaza outside the main entrance you see ancient Athens below you in those exposed ruins, the 19th and 20th century city around you and a 21st century building rising above you. If you know the elegant modernist box that Richard Meier designed to surround the Ara Pacis Altar in Rome, a treasure from the 1st century B.C., you know what I mean.

Until now the Parthenon marbles still in Greece were displayed in the old museum on the Acropolis. A few weeks ago workers began transferring them in crates by way of huge cranes to the new museum. Some of those crates are already on the upper gallery floor, but the marbles won't be fully installed for months. Early next year, while installation is still underway, the public will be admitted into the new museum, with an official opening set for some time in early 2009. Athens hasn't seen a thunderbolt like this since Athena last threw one. Will it carry out its assigned task, to summon the Elgins back? For once the cliche works so well it really can't be avoided. If you build it, will they come?

October 28, 2007

Where Gods Yearn for Long-Lost Treasures

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

for the New York Times

NO sane architect, one can assume, would want to invite comparisons between his building and theParthenon. So it comes as little surprise that the New Acropolis Museum, which stands at the foot of one of the great achievements of human history, is a quiet work, especially by the standards of its flamboyant Swissborn architect, Bernard Tschumi.

But in mastering his ego, Mr. Tschumi pulled off an impressive accomplishment: a building that is both an enlightening meditation on the Parthenon and a mesmerizing work in its own right. I can't remember seeing a design that is so eloquent about another work of architecture.

When this museum in Athens opens next year, hundreds of marble sculptures from the old Acropolis museum alongside the Parthenon will finally reside in a place that can properly care for them. Missing, however, will be more than half of the surviving Parthenon sculptures, the Elgin Marbles, so called since they were carted off to London by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century.

Britain's government maintains that they legally belong to the British Museum and insists that they will never be returned. The Greeks naturally argue that they belong in Athens.

Until now my sympathies tended to lie with the British. Most of the world's great museum collections have some kind of dubious deals in their pasts. Why bother untangling thousands of years of imperialist history? Wise men avert their eyes and move on.

But by fusing sculpture, architecture and the ancient landscape into a forceful visual narrative, the New Acropolis Museum delivers a revelation that trumps the tired arguments and incessant flag waving by both sides. It's impossible to stand in the top-floor galleries, in full view of the Parthenon's ravaged, sun-bleached frame, without craving the marbles' return.

The museum's rhetorical power may surprise people who have followed the project over the last six years. Mr. Tschumi won the competition with a design that seemed chaste and austere by comparison with the flamboyant confabulations that are now common in contemporary museum design.

The museum had to respond to more than 100 lawsuits before construction could begin, including disputes over its location and whether the sculptures could be moved without putting them at risk. (Local preservationists are now fighting to block plans to demolish two landmark buildings — an Art Deco gem and a lesser neo-Classical structure — that block the sightlines from the museum to an ancient amphitheater at the base of the Acropolis.)

But the end result is a remarkably taut and subtle building. When I first glimpsed it on the approach from Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, a pedestrian avenue that leads from the Plaka cafe district, it seemed to fade into the dense grid of the city. Its facade, heavy bands of glass atop a concrete base punctured by narrow windows, seemed calm and unobtrusive.

Yet as I drew closer, the forms grew more precarious. To preserve the ruins of an ancient village that was discovered at the site during construction, the entire building has been raised on huge columns. A wildly overscale concrete canopy juts over the main entry plaza. Just above, the museum's top floor seems to shift slightly, its corners cantilevering over the edge of the story below as if it is sliding off the top of the building.

This instability sets in motion a carefully paced narrative, guiding you through centuries of Greek history and allowing you to see the Parthenon with fresh eyes. An elliptical cutout in the plaza floor offers a view of the archaeological ruins below. From there you head into a low, dusky lobby and turn onto a vast ramp that leads to the main galleries.

Sunlight spills down through a concrete-and-glass grid several stories above; the floor of the ramp is a grid with fritted glass panels that allow additional glimpses of the subterranean ruins. As you walk upward, you pass a series of chiseled figures on gray marble pedestals before arriving at an Archaic limestone pediment at the top of the ramp.

The procession echoes the climb to the Parthenon, which culminates when you pause before the stark columns of the Propylaea, or entrance. Yet only as you turn the corner and enter the main gallery do you begin to grasp the significance of the journey. This vast space, now empty, will soon be filled with sculptures of gods and other mythological figures dating from the Mycenaean period to the early fifth century B.C. A fragment of a marble pediment that depicts Athena wrestling with giants — an example of the unrestrained, expressive style that preceded the controlled vigor of the High Classical period — will anchor the gallery's far end. From there you loop around to more escalators and stairs, leading to a mezzanine restaurant and a small gallery that will house a balustrade from the Temple of Athens depicting the goddess flanked by winged Nikes.

The sequence brings to mind a 1940 essay by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in which he described the Acropolis as one of the world's most ancient films because of the way you experience it as you move through space. "It is hard to imagine a montage sequence for an architectural ensemble more subtly composed, shot by shot, than the one that our legs create by walking among the buildings," he mused.

Like Eisenstein, Mr. Tschumi aims to create a montage of visual experiences. The roaming viewer stands in for the camera, collecting and reassembling these images along the way. Only when you reach your destination do they fuse into a coherent vision.

The sense of anticipation reaches its full pitch as you enter the museum's top-floor galleries. They echo the layout of the Parthenon itself, with a colonnade set around a sacred inner temple chamber. The temple friezes will be mounted in an unbroken sequence along a central core so that you will be able to follow the narrative without interruption. The panels lost to antiquity will be left blank; those that remain in the British Museum will be reproduced in plaster yet covered by a diaphanous veil to make clear that they're fakes. The entire floor is wrapped in glass so that you can gaze at the surrounding city.

The genius lies in how the room snaps disparate sculptural and architectural fragments into their proper context. You first enter the south side of the gallery, where the museum's friezes and metopes will be seen against the chalky backdrop of the rooftops of Athens. As you turn a corner, the Parthenon comes into full view; the ancient temple hovers through huge windows to your right. The eastern facade of the Parthenon and the sculptures that once adorned it unite in your imagination, allowing you to picture the temple as it was in Periclean Athens. Eventually you descend through a sequence of smaller galleries, where the glories of the High Classical period gradually give way to Roman copies of Greek antiquities. The Parthenon fades from view.

It's a magical experience. Rather than replicating or simply echoing the Classical past, Mr. Tschumi engages in a dialogue that reaches across centuries.

I carried these thoughts with me as I boarded an evening flight to London shortly after touring the museum. The next morning I walked from my hotel to the British Museum to visit the Elgin Marbles. Inside the long, narrow Duveen Gallery I felt an immediate twinge of pain. The marbles were stunning, but they looked homesick.

To give visitors some sense of where they were in the Parthenon, the curators have hung the friezes along two facing walls, with the pediments set at each end of the gallery. Even so, you read them as individual works of art, not as part of a composition.

A panel depicting the receding tail of one horse and the advancing head of another with an expanse of blank stone in between is breathtaking. But it's hard to picture how it originally fit into the Parthenon. The lack of context is only reinforced by Lord Elgin's decision two centuries ago to cut the works out of the huge blocks of stone into which they were originally carved, a cruel act of vandalism intended to make them easier to ship.

In dismantling the ruins of one of the glories of Western civilization, Lord Elgin robbed them of their meaning. The profound connection of the marbles to the civilization that produced them is lost.

Mr. Tschumi's great accomplishment is to express this truth in architectural form. Without pomp or histrionics, his building makes the argument for the marbles' return.

The silhouette of a worker is seen as he stands in the new Acropolis Museum currently under construction next to the ancient hill. The first stage of construction is expected to be completed in January, allowing for the museum to be partly opened to the public. It is expected to be fully operational in early 2009. A major operation to transport some 330 statues and artifacts from the current museum atop the Acropolis will begin on October 14.

article from: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/17/yale

Yale and Peru Reach Pact on Artifacts

Yale University has agreed that its extensive collections of artifacts taken from Machu Picchu almost a century ago are in fact the property of Peru and that many of them should return to that country. The agreement, which extends beyond the artifacts in dispute, promotes the idea of research collaboration between Yale and Peru and ends a bitter legal dispute over a prized collection.

Archaeologists, other anthropologists, and college museum directors — who have been closely watching the negotiations — applauded the outcome.

Several said that it could be a new model for resolving such disputes.

"Repatriation of objects from other cultures, most of which were acquired in the early part of the 20th century before important export rules and a focus on ethical and procedural standards for museum operations, will continue to be an issue," said Lisa Tremper Hanover, president of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries. "Yale is setting an important example in working with Peru for the common goal of interpreting and sharing a cultural heritage. It should be a model for other institutions."

Added Hanover, director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College: "This is a good thing."

A joint statement from Yale and Peru announced these terms:

* Yale and Peru will co-sponsor an exhibition that will travel internationally, featuring objects the collections from Cusco and Machu Picchu. The exhibit will be curated by Yale and Peru's National Institute of Culture and will include additional pieces loaned by Peru.

* Peru, with advice from Yale, will build a new museum and research center in Cusco. The exhibition will be installed at the museum following its tour.

* Yale will acknowledge Peru's title to all the excavated objects, including the fragments, bones and specimens from Machu Picchu.

* Peru will share with Yale rights in the research collection, part of which will remain at Yale as object of ongoing research.

* Once the museum is ready for operation, the museum-quality objects will return to Peru along with a portion of the research collection.

The statement stressed that Yale and Peru would seek to promote research on a range of topics beyond the artifacts. "This understanding represents a new model of international cooperation providing for the collaborative stewardship of cultural and natural treasures," said the statement.

Yale ended up with thousands of objects from Machu Picchu, which had been unstudied for centuries when a Yale team — alerted by local farmers — started working there in 1911. Hiram Bingham III, who later became governor of Connecticut, led a series of projects that brought the artifacts to Yale. In 2005, Peru's government announced that it would sue Yale if the university did not return the artifacts.

Many universities and museums gathered up objects from developing nations and made deals to take the artifacts home. Many of these deals have attracted scrutiny over the years, as those giving permission to take objects were never briefed on the implications of what they were doing or weren't in a position to say No. Peruvian authorities have said that Bingham received permission to take the artifacts for up to 18 months for study, but that the artifacts were never intended as more than a short-term loan and that they should have been returned long ago.

Richard L. Burger, a professor of anthropology at Yale, said that the agreement included protections that would assure that current research isn't disrupted and that future research could include the artifacts.

"It's an agreement that is good for Yale and good for Peru," he said.

"It's a forward looking, and it's much broader than a question of items."

Alex W. Barker, who heads the ethics committees of both the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology, said he was impressed with the way the situation was resolved. "Ethical standards are always evolving and, I hope, always improving, and deciding how to resolve disputes from earlier periods in which the ethical standards — not to mention the museum staffs and governmental representatives — involved were different is always hard," said Barker.

"There are no cookbook solutions. Open negotiation between the parties concerned is almost always the only workable and fair way to resolve such disputes."

Barker, who stressed that he was not speaking for the committees he leads, said that the Yale-Peru dispute and similar conflicts "go to the core issues of who controls the past."

The ethics committees consistently urge academic departments and museums to be "as transparent as possible" in discussing where collections came from and under what circumstances, he said. When departments or university museums come to the committees for advice, he said, it's usually because someone has advanced a claim against a part of a collection.

While it's hard to predict what impact the Yale agreement will have, Barker said that "any time a claim like this is resolved, it's going to lead to other groups seeing if they can make similar arguments."

He also noted that these disputes aren't just about whether objects are physically located in one country or another. "This isn't just about things that were carted off, but about how cultures are represented around the world," said Barker, who is director of the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Dean R. Snow, president of the Society for American Archaeology and a professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, said that having these objects preserved in Peru was consistent with the way scholars in the field work these days. Most countries for decades now have been reluctant to let those running digs take their finds home. "So with rare exceptions, you work on the stuff you find in that country," said Snow.

The society's position, as a result, isn't to worry about where artifacts reside, but whether they are cared for and available to researchers. "The propriety of legal ownership is not something that we have been terribly involved with," Snow said. "Our interest is always in the resource itself — what's best for the resource, how to protect the collection."

The best thing about the resolution of the dispute may just be that it's over, Snow said. "It's good that it's settled and it's good that we had the discussions about this in the first place. This is not the kind of dispute to end in a nasty lawsuit," he said.

It's also important to remember, he said, that most of the work scholars do excavating abroad doesn't lead to famous museum pieces, such as the Peru collections at Yale or the Elgin Marbles, housed at the British Museum and long sought by Greece. The issues of access are still important on objects no one knows about — but most of these objects would never be fought over, Snow said.

"There's a real distinction between collections of museum quality and those that most North American archaeologists work with, which have very little museum quality but have scientific value," said Snow. "We're collecting soil samples. We're collecting dung samples. At the end of the day, after we've recorded the data, the best place for the original material might be a dumpster."

— Scott Jaschik

The International Council of Museum (ICOM) has called for the repatriation of African cultural properties in foreign museums.
Obinna Emelike and Priscilla Olakunle
The call was made by Violetta Ekpo, Nigerian representative to the Paris-based ICOM, in her lecture titled: Museums and Universal Heritage: The right to ownership, which was part of the activities marking the World Museums Day, organised by the Centre for Black and African Arts & Civilization (CBAAC) recently at the National Theatre, Lagos.

Ekpo said that the need for the repatriation of the antiquities was informed by the fact that most African cultural materials in foreign museums were acquired through illegal means.

"Usually, such items are prohibited for export. The transfer of ownership rights of such cultural properties is illegal, if done contrary to the protection laws and regulations adopted by its state of origin".

She noted that United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), in its 1970 International Convention, recognises as a nation's property under protection, the one that has been created by its nationals or other national within the territory of the state, found within the national territory, or acquired through authorised archaeological, ethnological or scientific missions, or through legal exchange, donation or purchase.

She urged Africa and Nigeria in particular, to take advantage of the UNESCO's Information Kit on the Return and Restitution of Cultural Property (UNIDROIT) Convention, which provides for the return of stolen or illegally exported cultural property to their country of origin, to demand for the reparation of her illegally acquired antiquities in several European museums.

On return, the antiquities according to her, would constitute a huge tourism attraction by wooing foreigners to come and see them here, and enabling Africans to have a better understanding of their history, and proper identification with their cultural heritage.

The ICOM representative however, said that Nigeria should strengthen her law, regulations and export policies to safe guard further illicit trading on her antiquities and to protect exiting ones.

She urged Nigeria to provide adequate facilities to house the antiquities on their return to the country. The lack of facilities and experienced curators/personnel, according to her, has been one of the reasons most foreign museums give for not returning them back to their country of origin.

She further said that UNESCO and ICOM, in collaboration with other organisations such as INTERPOL, WCO among others have adopted additional measures for the protection of cultural property and facilitating the repatriation of illegally displaced cultural items.

In his address, Aremu Dada, acting chairman, governing board, CBAAC, said the event signifies the first time the centre is fulfilling its obligation as a strategic member ICOM.

He disclosed that CBAAC was established as a follow-up of FESTAC'77, and as a modest way of institutionalising the gains of the historic festival, noting that the Centre has been waxing stringer since then in the promotion and propagation of Black and African cultural heritage.

In his remarks, Tunde Babawale, director/chief executive, CBAAC, said the Centre is marking the World Museums Day because museums are as germane to human history as culture is to a people's existence.

Babawale noted that the topic of the commemorative lecture was most appropriate and applicable to CBAAC, now the Centre has started mounting pressure on the British Museum for the release of the original sample of the FESTAC' 77 mask which is in their possession.

He noted that Nigerian government deemed it necessary to create a museum of Black and African Arts and Civilization to preserve the numerous works of art displayed at the successful Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), hosted by Nigeria in 1977.

"Since inception, CBAAC, which was established by the 59 Black and African countries that participated in the festival, as a child of necessity, has taken custody of all these materials and artefacts, which are consistently augmented", the director/chief executive said.

Other events marking the celebration include an exhibition titled: Museum and Universal Heritage held at the Exhibition Hall of the Centre which displayed cultural paintings, drawings, wood works among others that depicted the richness and trueness of the African cultural heritage and historical development.

It also witnessed several dance performances by different cultural groups, a roundtable discussion, question/answer session by the participants which include students from some secondary schools in Lagos.

May 18 of every year has been set aside by ICOM Paris to commemorate World Museums Day, with mandate to all cultural agencies, member countries and individuals in the service of humanity to observe.

http://www.businessdayonline.com/

GREEK Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis today asked Australia to pressure Britain to hand over the Elgin Marbles after Canberra successfully lobbied for the return from London of ancient aboriginal remains.

The Elgin Marbles, known in Greece as the Parthenon Marbles, are a series of friezes and sculptures removed from the Acropolis above Athens by British diplomat Lord Elgin some 200 years ago and are now housed in the British Museum.

Britain has refused to return the marbles, claiming they are best preserved in London where they are a major attraction.

"It's a matter of reunification of a very important monument of global dimension," Mr Karamanlis told reporters after talks in Canberra with Prime Minister John Howard during an official five-day visit.

"We will not spare any effort to communicate with all our friends in government, but also all the people, to join the voices which will lead to a solution satisfactory to the cultural heritage of the Parthenon."

Mr Howard said the marbles, which Greece says Britain has a moral obligation to return, were a matter for the two countries to resolve. But he signalled he supported their return.

"I have on a number of occasions raised the issue in the discussions I have had with the British prime minister, stretching back for some years," Mr Howard said.

Australia this month secured the return of Aboriginal remains which had been held in a British museum for more than 100 years.