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| The Duveen Gallery at the British Museum |
I have been doing some writing – and thinking – recently about the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum (BM) which Greece wants returned. We used to call them the Elgin Marbles after the seventh Earl of Elgin who brought them to London. The legality of their removal from Greece was a little dubious and, even if it was properly, authorised, it was done so by the Turks not the Greeks themselves. Greece at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire, which Elgin was ambassador to and they may – or may not – have allowed him to take them to London, where they ended up and can be seen in the Duveen Gallery of the BM.
As a young tourist guide, I mentioned the Marbles on a tour of London, knowing that there were a few Greeks on board. “Ah, those are the ones you stole,” said one of them, thus immediately puncturing my attempt to be inclusive. I have long since learned to get my retaliation in first and, if I go to the British Museum with a group, am not afraid to bring up the subject myself. My argument for keeping the Marbles in London is that they do not belong to the British, any more than to the Greeks. They belong to the whole world and they just happen to be in London.
In London they can be seen free of charge by over six million visitors a year to the Museum, most of whom will go into the Duveen Gallery (Room 18) where they are on display. In Athens you would have to pay to go to the new gallery in the Acropolis Museum where they have a space pointedly waiting for their eventual return. This will probably not happen in my lifetime as the Museum authorities say that, to return the Marbles, will effectively bring about the end of the BM as other countries queue up to reclaim “their” treasures from it.
The Greeks claim that returning the Marbles to Athens will not necessarily set a precedent for other countries to follow and should be considered in isolation. This is a born yesterday type of attitude in my view. You can just hear the other countries saying, “You gave the Marbles back to Greece. Now it is our turn.” The line will stretch around Russell Square and reach the British Library, which used to be inside the Museum, and will next on the list for repatriation of the various volumes they have “acquired” over the centuries. Take this process to its logical conclusion and people living in Britain will only ever be able to see British works of art, in Italy Italian works of art and in Finland Finnish works of art – which is surely the exact opposites of what museums are meant to be and will bring to an end the international flavour of these institutions which are supposed to bring people together.
The movement to return the Marbles to Greece puts ownership above accessibility. It says that it is more important that they are in the right place than that people should be able to see them. London is one of the most visited cities in the world and the rather badly named British Museum – most of its exhibits come from outside Britain – is right in the centre of the city, available for millions of people to visit. The Greeks cannot afford free admission to their museums and attract less than a quarter of the number of people who go to the BM. The Marbles are not only more accessible in London, but they are a great advertisement for Greece’s ancient culture and achievements. Why remove them in order to prove a point?
It would not be possible for Lord Elgin to act in the way he did today. He did not, incidentally, make a profit from bringing the Marbles to London, where he sold them to the British government for less than half of what it had cost him to bring them here. (If he did “steal” them, he was not a very smart thief.) His attitude was that, by removing the Marbles, he was saving them for civilisation, as they had been badly damaged while they were in Greece and needed to be looked after properly, which could only happen in a museum environment in London. They were originally destined for his home but he had to sell them to recoup some of the considerable amount he had spent to bring them here – not least as he was tied up in an expensive divorce at the time and had money problems.
Elgin’s approach – and that of others who filled the Museum with the treasures it displays – was shot through with racial assumptions that would not be considered acceptable today. It assumes that white British men should look after the treasures of the ancient world because darker-skinned locals were not willing or able to do so themselves. I always thought that Elgin had been given an unfairly bad press for his role and feel that he acted from a genuine desire to preserve them for posterity. This does not alter the sense that he felt entitled to do so using methods alien to current attitudes, when it is necessary to show respect to local cultures instead of looting them for the benefit of so-called superior ones who know better.
Would the Marbles still exist if Elgin had left them alone and merely had pictures drawn of them to show the world what they were like, as he had originally intended? I doubt it. He acted in a way that conserved them for future generations and prevented their eventual destruction. At least, in that sense, he was acting in a way that led them to being preserved. This at least is in tune with current trends and, instead of being condemned as a thief, his reputation should be rehabilitated as a preserver of some of the world’s greatest treasures.
My conclusion: the Marbles should stay in London and not be sent back to Greece.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
