Emanuel Comino, founder and Chair of the IOCARPM to present the Parthenon Marbles and the case for their reunification on Wednesday 29 March 2023. The lecture will start at 19:00 at the Pallaconian Brotherhood in Brunswick, an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Australia.

Read more on IOCARPM, the first campaigning committee to be set up for this cause. Emanuel Comino is also the Vice-Chair of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS). Emanuel was first elected to this post in April 2019 in Athens and re-elected in September 2022, also in Athens. The conferences held on each of these two occassions were organised through the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture. 

Emanuel and his committee have worked alongside BCRPM with colloquies held in London, Sydney and Athens. These first started in 2012, the year of the London Olympics and span over a decade including a commemorative conference held in London's Senate House in June 2016.  

BCRPM welcomes two new members: Avgoustinos Galiassos and George Gabriel.

Avgoustinos Galiassos came to the UK in 2003 to pursue his master’s degree in Supply Chain Management at Warwick University. From the very beginning he committed himself to the Greek Community while at the same time holding positions of high responsibility within multinational Companies such as Coca-Cola, Bloomberg, British Biscuits Manufacturer McVities and British Tea Company Finlays, in the areas of strategy, innovation, supply chain management and product management.

Avgoustinos is the founder of Ellines sto Londino / Greeks in London with more than 67,000 members. He also hosts a weekly TV show with Greek professionals on Hellenic TV,  the only Greek language television channel in operation, outside Greece and Cyprus, since 1990.

Having spent time within the Greek Community since his early days in London, he soon realised how vital it was to connect Greek businesses and professionals with Greek and UK residents, and vice versa for the common good, as well as connecting Greece in the UK.

Using his personal experience moving from Greece to the United Kingdom, Avgoustinos created a Greek List Group: Greeklist.co.uk, which has a complete Business Listings website of Greek companies & professionals in the United Kingdom.

George Gabriel 

George Gabriel who is both British and Greek has graduated from Oxford University with a First-Class Honours BA in PPE. George also completed the Clore Social Leadership Fellow 2014, and is a community organiser and technologist. After ten years working to bring together groups in civil society to campaign for better wages, decent housing and safer streets he founded Safe Passage in 2015,  in response to the Syrian refugee crisis and has helped over 1,800 unaccompanied child refugees reach safety. He currently works at Meta leading Strategic Initiatives which focus on community building.

How does an institution in the business of preserving the past prepare itself for the interests and sensibilities of the future? Where do museums fit in the national psyche?

In this episode of Worldview, host Adam Boulton is joined by director of the V&A Tristram Hunt, Professor Armand D'Angour (BCRPM member), and author Dr. Tiffany Jenkins to discuss what the future might hold for museums.

Tristram Hunt explains there is so much to be gained by understanding museum objects, the importance of open conversation, and the need to do more for art and design education. He also stresses the importance of provenance and that there are further conversations to be had with museums.

Armand D'Angour, now also a BCRPM member spoke passionately about the Parthenon Marbles and the opportunities for the British Museum to have a relevant display in Room 18, one that would appeal to today's museum visitors as they continue to be educated by the storytelling.

Tiffany Jenjkins spoke about 'repatriation' but was keen to stress the need for museums to kindle curiosity of past cultures, that the British Museum's ability to do this with many different cultures made it extra special as our curiosities deserve to be ignited and enlightened.

It was uplifting to hear Tiffany Jenkins say that one of her favourite museums was the Acropolis Museum.

The re-imagining of museum spaces when some artefacts are returned to their country of origin, is a great opportunity to open up the dialogue between communities, turning the storytelling holistic, engaging, and educational. Time to achieve that for the Parthenon Marbles.

Karen Schwarz started work on this cartoon when she read about the arguments for keeping the Parthenon sculptures in Britain. Karen visited the “Elgin Marbles” with her art history class during a semester in London in 1977.

"Our professor didn’t raise the issue of repatriation, and I was a clueless student. But now, I think that the folks who argue “they belong in Britain,” belong in a museum exhibit themselves." Comments Karen.

Karen Schwarz took up cartooning when her youngest child finished college and moved away. She has a small practice helping students with college admissions essays, and delivers groceries for a food pantry. She and her husband, an entertainment executive, live in Los Angeles.

It’s a bit disappointing that such a factually doubtful argument is sketched in by Jonathan Sumption about the Parthenon marbles, in complete contrast to his nice assessment of the travails of English National Opera, where a grossly unfair and skinflinty case has been put by ACE in wrenching this marvellous opera organisation limb from limb.

These scupltures were removed without express permission from the occupying power by Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman court, who wanted them to adorn his Scottish pile. The museum in Athens which Sumption airily dismisses was expressly built to house them, is gloriously modern, and is directly opposite the Parthenon so the visitor will at long last be able to make visual sense of where the figures stood before being hacked off the building by Elgin’s clumsy workers.

UNESCO has voted as one to have them returned to their home turf. The Hellenic Republic itself has committed to have them returned the moment it gained its independence from Ottoman rule. Nor can the British Museum claim to have cared for them with curatorial exactitude; in Duveen’s day they had them scrubbed with wire cleaners to restore ‘whiteness’ to the Pentelic marble thereby removing the precious patina that had protected them.

Besides that destructive gaffe, Room 18 leaks and had been closed for a year and it has no air conditioning so cold and heat are always wafting through these rooms. And by the bye, there are far more than just 'three sadly deteriorated panels' in that Acropolis Museum, there is also the other half of the matchless pedimental figures and they deserve to be seen as a whole. Not to mention the frieze and the metopes. 

As to the hysterical slippery slope scenario that Jonathan Sumption fears, the Greeks are not asking for a single piece bar the British Museum’s ill-gotten Parthenon marbles. I don’t know what special hot-line he might have to lament the loss of all the world treasures he cites, but apart from the Benin Bronzes, Rosetta Stone, Hoa Hakananai'a,  we have not heard of any decimatory demands from elsewhere. Those museums that have opted to return seminal cultural objects taken in colonial days will have shown an openness of mind that the BM might well emulate in this instance.

I suggest former Judge Jonathan Sumption sticks to opera as his pet subject, and leaves Greek sculpture to its own battles.

+ PS: London: the British Museum displays around half of the surviving works: 56 blocks of frieze (247ft), 15 metopes (panels) and 17 pediment figures.
Athens: the Acropolis Museum displays 40 blocks of frieze, 48 metopes and 9 pediment figures. Fragments from the same pieces are in London and Athens. One can’t help wondering if Jonathan Sumption would perhaps enjoy his Rheingold more if he watched the first half in London and flew to Bayreuth during the long interval for the second bit?

Jonathan Sumptions article ( 'The cringing self-abasement of Britain’s museums') was published in The Spectator on 25 February 2023. Janet Suzman's response was sent into the publication to both the letters section and editorial. No part of Janet's response was published.

On Sunday a flurry of reports from Reuters, and other media outlets to highlight the possibility of an agreement bewteen Greece and UK that could sidestep the need to amend the UK's British Museum Act 1963, in order to facilitate the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

On Monday, UK's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, stated in the Guardian that as the British Museum collection is funded by taxpayers and protected by law, the portion of the Parthenon Marbles in Bloomsbury, would remain in the UK.

Read the full article by Aubrey Allegretti in the Guardian.

“The UK has cared for the Elgin marbles for generations,” Sunak said. “Our galleries and museums are funded by taxpayers because they are a huge asset to this country."

A UK factoid: what about the way in which the sculptures that Lord Elgin's men deployed to remove the  best pieces, destined to decorate his ancestral home, or the  cleaning in 1938-1939?

“We share their treasures with the world, and the world comes to the UK to see them. The collection of the British Museum is protected by law, and we have no plans to change it.”

Sharing Greece's treasures is not the issue, as there are over 100,000 Greek artefacts in the British Museum. The Parthenon Marbles are specific sculptures, fragmented, and  the pieces that survive are mainly divided between Athens and London.

Greece has always, and only asked for the reunification of the sculptures from the Parthenon. Greece has also offered other Greek artefacts not seen outside of Greece for the British Museum's Room 18.

This story was also reported in Reuters, ARTnews,the Evening Standard, the Greek Reporter and many more.