This article in The Guardian on Sunday, by Chloe Mac Donnell is terrifically pleasing to BCRPM:

At Erdem Moralıoğlu’s show, held at the British Museum, the actors Kristin Scott Thomas and Ruth Wilson were guests of honour. The catwalk was staged in front of the Parthenon marbles – the fifth-century BC masterpieces that sparked Rishi Sunak’s recent diplomatic “blunder”. Moralıoğlu, whose collection was inspired by the American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas, said he had chosen the location to reflect how Callas had been “uprooted”. A booklet of images and notes left on each guest’s seat highlighted how, for Callas, “the absence of home was poignant and profound”.

It’s really very exciting that such a high profile fashion show was staged in front of the Marbles, because Erdem made a point of emphasising how for Callas - his Muse - “the absence of home was poignant and profound”. Just so.

Those present were facing away from Pheidias’s figures but from those silent stones at their backs they will have felt ‘Time's winged chariot drawing near’.

If those Marbles could only speak they would express the same haunting feeling of being uprooted, so we must speak for them. The day will surely come when those grievously uprooted sculptures will go home.

And on Wednesday 21 February in The Times, Victoria Hislop's thoughts on the fashion show too.

"An archaeologist pointed out to me, the volume of people present at Erdem’s show, plus the lighting and cameras, would have affected the temperature and humidity in the gallery. This could well have had a negative effect on these priceless works of art.

The sculptures are not indestructible — but they are irreplaceable. In London there are neoclassical buildings everywhere you look that could have been used for commercial promotion, all of them inspired by the architecture of ancient Greece. Yet the link between what the models were wearing and Medea or Greek sculpture seems spurious.

One irony is that the audience sat with their backs to the Parthenon sculptures — they wouldn’t have noticed if they were there or not. So why take the risk of damage? Of offence?" Asks Victoria.

Wonderful to hear Greek spoken and sung by talented school students and distinguished speakers at an event last Thursday that marked International Greek Language Day (February 9).

Defence Minister Nikos Dendias and Victoria Hislop, where among the guests that gathered at the Greek Ambassadors Residence to celebrate the Greek Language.

Following the message by Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Giorgos Kotsiras on the 9th of February, Ambassador Yannis Tsaousis addressed this event speaking about the significance of the Greek language and its remarkable continuity through the centuries. He also highlighting the promotion of Greek language learning within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Strategic Plan for Greeks Abroad, and relevant initiatives by Deputy Foreign Minister Giorgos Kotsiras and the Secretary General for Greeks Abroad and Public Diplomacy, John Chrysoulakis.

Later on, in a thought-provoking conversation with Ambassador Yannis Tsaousis, Victoria spoke about herjourney learning Greek, and writing about Greece.

Oxford student Ethan Chandler shared his powerful personal account of how his love of Greece, motivated him to learn the language.

How charitable organisations integrate Greek language learning into their work was the focus of 2 presentations about the Daughters of Penelope initiative to promote play-based Greek education to Greek Diaspora children & Kind at Heart Foundation's educational project in Tanzania.

Representing both the Greece and Cyprus Diaspora in the UK, and making the evening truly special, were school students from the Greek Primary School of London and the Hellenic School of High Barnet. They gave an unforgettable performance of Greek songs and a great poetry recital.

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.

Geraldine Kendall Adams reporting in the Museums Association writes: 

The UK Government is to exclude national museums and galleries from legislation that would have enabled them to restitute objects on moral grounds.

Under provisions in sections 15 and 16 of the Charities Act 2022, the trustees of national museums and galleries would have been allowed to seek authorisation from the Charity Commission if they felt compelled by moral obligation to make a transfer of charity property – a voluntary gesture of goodwill known as an ex gratia payment.

This would have provided them with a route to restitution, undermining existing statutes that prevent most national museums and galleries in England from deaccessioning items in all but limited circumstances.

The government says the implications of the legislation were not made clear when the bill passed through parliament.

In January this year, the arts and heritage minister, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, wrote to the Charity Commission to set out the government's position on the bill.

"The policy of HM Government is that national museums and galleries should continue to be bound by their governing legislation, precluding them from resolving to restitute objects from their collections other than in the limited and specific circumstances expressly provided for in legislation.

"To that end, we will specifically exclude those national museums and galleries from the commencement of sections 15 and 16 of the act."

The government is looking to bring sections 15 and 16 of the act into force later this year.

Some sector leaders, including Tristram Hunt, diirector of London's Victoria & Albert Museum, made clear that they would like national institutions to be given more leeway to return objects.

Read this Museums Association article in full.

An analysis of the issues around repatriation and restitution in national museums will be published in the March/April issue of Museums Journal.

THE PARTHENON MARBLES DISPUTE: Heritage, Law, Politics
Alexander Herman

The Parthenon Marbles are hot. Not in the sense that they are to be lusted after, as was Praxiteles’s also marble sculpture, the Aphrodite of Knidos, but because the question of whether the extant members should—ever—be reunified in Athens is a hot-button political issue, hot enough to set the Prime Ministers of Greece and the U.K. at each other’s throats. Into the fray intrepidly steps Alexander Herman, Director of the Institute of Art and Law, UK.

His otherwise estimable work suffers in one regard, however, the timing of its publication. It unfortunately finds itself up against that of Professor Catharine Titi, The Parthenon Marbles and International Law (Springer Verlag, 2023). Titi is an international human rights lawyer-academic of Greek origin based in Paris. Her magisterial work is truly groundbreaking and superior to the first four chapters of Herman’s (pp. 1-65). Those cover the original acquisition—or theft—of what ‘our man in Constantinople’, the Seventh Lord Elgin, UK ambassador to the Ottoman Sublime Porte, had removed by force and fraud from the ruined temple on the Athenian Acropolis to—eventually—London in the first decades of the 19th century. As Titi demonstrates beyond a peradventure, Elgin had no good legal title to what he claimed to own and sold to the British government in 1816 for £35,000. A fortiori, the British government had none either: it is only in UK domestic law that we the British people ‘own’ Parthenon sculptures.

H.’s book is, however, a useful and usable complement to Professor Titi’s. Like her, he rightly raises the crucially moral—as well as cultural, political, aesthetic etc.—issue at stake in the original Elgin (ad)venture—see ‘Law and Morality’ (pp. 51-3, concluding Chapter 3, ‘A Firman by Any Other Name’). He then proceeds in his remaining six chapters to give, as claimed, a thorough and no less importantly a balanced and critical account of the Elgin ‘dispute’, almost blow-by-blow.

Between 1816 and 2024 there have been several notable crunch-points: among them the newfangled Greek state’s original request for return of the BM’s marbles in the 1830s, and the passage in 1963—again, as in 1816, by a Tory government—of an Act of Parliament forbidding with only a couple of exceptions the BM ever to de-acquisition any of its now about 8 million (minus of course the 2000 or so recently liberated by a rogue curator) holdings. Look to the end, as Herodotus has one of his characters (Solon) presciently say …

Herman’s book is provided with a truly wonderful index, which has no fewer than ten ‘Parthenon’ entries, extending over almost 4 double-column pages. These start with: Parthenon centrality of, and proceed by way of … construction of (447-438) (Periclean Project); … Marbles (after arrival in Britain); … Marbles (history of the claim: British arguments against return/counter-arguments); … Marbles (history of the claim: legal action (IARPM)); … Marbles (history of the claim) (in date order); … Marbles (resolving the dispute); ‘Parthenon Partnership’; and Parthenon Project; to, finally, Parthenon sculptures.

Another special feature of H.’s book besides its index is its incorporation of the views of—among other interviewees—curators, museum directors, lawyers, archaeologists, and politicians in both London and Athens. Yet another are its suggestions for new ways of resolving all such cultural-heritage disputes going forward. If only….

Readers will no doubt wish to be selective in what claims and arguments they choose to focus upon. The very construction of the original Parthenon (not the whole temple’s name) was controversial, and the temple’s function or rather functions, and the interpretation of some or all of its many and polyvalent adornments, remain controversial to this day. H. gives a helpful dateline of the history of the ultimately Greek claim to reunification and the mainly British government/Museum’s counter-claims.

But what of his own views? There is a clue in the fact that he is not in favour of modifying, let alone rescinding, the 1963 Museums Act, and on p. 155 there is perhaps a sketch in miniature of his own, studiously neutral, formally apolitical position: ‘Perhaps it may be better … to leave the ultimate question of resolution to the museums themselves’. That will not be music to those of us who firmly believe the rightful permanent home for those Parthenon sculptures that the British Museum currently holds in trust for the British nation is the (specially dedicated, opened in 2009) Acropolis Museum in their native Athens.

Paul Cartledge

Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), a non-profit campaign group established in 1983, and an elected Vice-President of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS).

This review was published in Classic for All.

The headline of Niko Efstathiou's article in Kathimerini, 05 February 2023, post his visit to London took our breath away: 'In London, the return of the Parthenon Sculptures seems all but inevitable'.

For most of us, and not just in Greece and the UK but globally too, this has been a hope that has burned passionately for what seems like forever.

That Niko encountered visitors in the British Museum's Room 18  admiring the fragmented and divided Parthenon Marbles, also saying how they hoped to see them reunited, was nothing new. This has been happening for sometime. More so however since the opening of the superlative Acropolis Museum in June 2009.

"No major news has surfaced in the past few months, since British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s last-minute cancellation of a meeting with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis in late November reinvigorated a decade-old cultural debate. But today, the sentiment in London is that the return of the 2,500-year-old marble sculptures and reliefs is all but inevitable." Writes Niko as he goes on to outline the strong public support, which has also been there for sometime.

The British sense of far-play to the fore: if these sculptures were removed when the country of origin had no voice, we ought to do the right thing, and return them to the country of origin. A sentiment echoed at UNESCO's ICPRCP and translated into recommendations and conclusions to highlight the ever pressing need to find a solution to this, long running, cultural heritage dispute. A dispute that has kept the media writing, and voicing their observations. There has been no end to the coverage for this just cause.  

"In an exercise where legal formulation meets branding, significant efforts are being made by both parties to keep the agreement’s messaging positive, and the wording around ownership vague enough so that both Greece – which regards ownership over the artifacts as key in any potential agreement – and the British Museum – which is restricted by laws, such as the British Museum Act of 1963, that ban the removal of artifacts from its collection – can come to a consensus." Continues Nikos in his article and indeed we reflect on how many times BCRPM's Chairs and Vice-Chairs have urged the UK to consider amending the law. An amendment that was not given the consideration it deserved  because of fear. The fear of  'what else' would be requested and spurious 'floodgates' arguments stopping any sensible progress. Fear by the UK's PMs, and MPs. 

And Nikos goes on to add: "In the meantime, if there is one thing pushing the deal closer towards fruition it is the British Museum’s leadership".  Totally on point, as the British Museum and the UK Government were never keen to engage in dialogue.  Now under the leadership of George Osborne, the British Museum is looking for a 'win-win' long term partnership where cultural artefacts are given maximun mobility, and these peerless sculptures are allowed to travel back to Attica.

We will never forget when one of the sculptures, Ilissos, travelled to St Petersburg, nor can we forget the equally unsupportive reaction of those that hold the British Museum in the highest esteem. It was not, that Director's finest hour, made worse by what hasn't made relations between the West and Russia any better. The annexing of Crimea it seemed was just the begining of a grander scheme to gain more land, and Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24 February 2022. Ilissos' move from London to St Petersburg sparked more support for the reunification of these sculptures, than it did for the relations betweeb Russia and the West.

And so to 2024 and two friendly nations looking to a museum “partnership that requires no one to relinquish their claims.”

"Paradoxically, though the explosive diplomatic spat that took place in November suggested that the current UK government will not back a potential deal, Downing Street’s impulsive reaction may have also triggered a change in British politics. Sunak’s panicked decision to cancel the meeting with Mitsotakis ended up being widely criticized by all sides of the political spectrum, among others by Osborne himself, a former chancellor of the exchequer for a Tory government, who suggested it was a “hissy fit.” Continues to write Niko. Indeed what was PM Sunak thinking?

“I jumped up and down with joy when it happened, because obviously it was a mistake,” recalls Dame Janet Suzman, actress and chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, while detailing to Kathimerini her reaction to Sunak’s controversial snub. “I honestly think it is not something he thought about very deeply, it was a surface reaction in reply to an analogy used by the Greek PM on British TV. But it created a tidal wave of publicity for the return of the sculptures, so we were naturally quite thrilled in our organization.”

British politicians making mistakes, errors in diplomacy and international relations? Did this snub help the request for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles? Our Chair, Janet says yes.

"As much as Greece would like to keep British politics out of any potential agreement, guaranteeing governmental support would make the deal with the British Museum far easier to implement. Herein lies the last factor most probably aligning with Greece’s case – at least very soon. Brits are heading to the polls in less than a year for national elections, and with polls unanimously showing the Tories trailing the Labour Party by unprecedented margins, a change in government seems almost certain. By all accounts, Sunak’s most likely successor, current opposition leader Keir Starmer, will be far more cooperative in the case of the Parthenon Marbles’ reunification." Writes Nikos. And indeed this sentiment was also echoed by Victoria Hislop during her interviews, whilst in Athens for the launch of her latest fictional novel, which was published also in Greek. A book launch that took place at the Acropolis Museum, on Thursday, 25 January.

And PM Mitsotakis' endevour, his mission to reunite the sculptures, a mission he has continued to push on with for nearly two years. “Let me be clear, we will insist on their reunification,” he said in New York.

"And though it is now waiting time, and the exact details of the deal are far from set and still kept away from public scrutiny, it is hard not to see that his vision – once a huge point of contention with Britain – is more likely to materialize than ever before." Concludes Niko Efstathiou.

To read Niko's toughtful article in full, follow the link here.